Problems of Marxist Dialectics
7: Materialist Critique of Objective Idealism 8: Materialist conception of thought as Subject matter of Logic 9: Coincidence of Logic with Dialectics & Theory of Knowledge of Materialism 10: Contradiction as a Category of Dialectical Logic 11: Problem of the General in Dialectics Conclusion

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INTRODUCTION

The task, bequeathed to us by Lenin, of creating a Logic (with a capital ‘L’), i.e. of a systematically developed exposition of dialectics understood as the logic and theory of knowledge of modern materialism, has become particularly acute today. The clearly marked dialectical character of the problems arising in every sphere of social life and scientific knowledge is making it more and more clear that only Marxist-Leninist dialectics has the capacity to be the method of scientific understanding and practical activity, and of actively helping scientists in their theoretical comprehension of experimental and factual data and in solving the problems they meet in the course of research. In the past ten or fifteen years, quite a few works have been written devoted to separate branches that are part of the whole of which we still only dream; they can justly be regarded as paragraphs, even chapters, of the future Logic, as

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more or less finished blocks of the building being erected. One cannot, of course, cement these ‘blocks’ mechanically into a whole; but since the task of a systematic exposition of dialectical logic can only be solved by collective efforts, we must at least determine the most general principles of joint work. In the essays presented here we attempt to concretise some of the points of departure of such collective work. In philosophy, more than in any other science, as Hegel remarked with some regret in his Phenomenology of Mind, ‘the end or final result seems ... to have absolutely expressed the complete fact itself in its very nature; contrasted with that the mere process of bringing it to light would seem, properly speaking, to have no essential significance’. That is very aptly put. So long as dialectics (dialectical logic) is looked upon as a simple tool for proving a previously accepted thesis (irrespective of whether it was initially advanced as the rules of mediaeval disputes required, or only disclosed at the end of the argument, in

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order to create the illusion of not being preconceived, that is, of saying: “Look, here is what we have obtained although we did not assume it”), it will remain something of ‘no essential significance’. When dialectics is converted into a simple tool for proving a previously accepted (or given) thesis, it becomes a sophistry only outwardly resembling dialectics, but empty of content. And if it is true that real dialectical logic takes on life not in ‘naked results’, and not in the ‘tendency’ of the movement of thought, but only in the form of ‘the result along with the process of arriving at it’, then during the exposition of dialectics as Logic, we must reckon with this truth. For it is impossible to go to the other extreme, taking the view that we had allegedly not set ourselves any aim determining the means and character of our activity from the very outset in the course of our analysis of the problem, but had set out swimming at random. And we are therefore obliged, in any case, to say clearly, at the very beginning, what the ‘object’ is in which we want

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to discover the intrinsically necessary division into parts. Our ‘object’ or ‘subject matter’ in general, and on the whole, is thought, thinking; and dialectical Logic has as its aim the development of a scientific representation of thought in those necessary depend moments, either on and our moreover will or in on the our necessary sequence, that do not in the least consciousness. In other words Logic must show how thought develops if it is scientific, if it reflects, i.e. reproduces in concepts, an object existing outside our consciousness and will and independently of them, in other words, creates a mental reproduction of it, reconstructs its selfdevelopment, recreates it in the logic of the movement of concepts so as to recreate it later in fact (in experiment or in practice). Logic then is the theoretical representation of such thinking. From what we have said it will be clear that we understand thought (thinking) as the ideal component of the real activity of social

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people transforming both external nature and themselves by their labour. Dialectical logic is therefore not only a universal scheme of subjective activity creatively transforming nature, but is also at the same time a universal scheme of the changing of any natural or socio-historical material in which this activity is fulfilled and with the objective requirements of which it is always connected. That, in our opinion, is what the real gist of Lenin’s thesis on the identity (not ‘unity’ only, but precisely identity, full coincidence) of dialectics, logic and the theory of knowledge of the modern, scientific. i.e. materialist, world outlook consist in. This approach preserves as one of the definitions of dialectics that given by Frederick Engels (‘dialectics, however, is nothing more than the science of the general laws of the motion and development of nature, human society, and thought’, i.e. of natural and socio-historical development, and not ‘specifically subjective’ laws and forms of thought).

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We think that one can unite dialectics and materialism in precisely that way, and show that Logic, being dialectical, is not only the science of ‘thinking’ but also the science of development of all things, both material and ‘spiritual’. Understood in that way Logic can also be the genuine science of the reflection of the movement of the world in the movement of concepts. Otherwise it is inevitably transformed, as has happened to it in the hands of Neopositivists, into a purely technical discipline, a description of systems of manipulations with the terms of language. The concretisation of the general definition of Logic presented above must obviously consist in disclosing the concepts composing it, above all the concept of thought (thinking). Here again a purely dialectical difficulty arises, namely, that to define this concept fully, i.e. concretely, also means to ‘write’ Logic, because a full description cannot by any means be given by a ‘definition’ but only by ‘developing the essence of the matter’.

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Everything we have said determines the design and plan of our book. or in this case at a Marxist-Leninist understanding of the essence of Logic and its concretely developed ‘concept’. it seems to us. then to a considerable degree.The concept ‘concept’ itself is also very closely allied with the concept of thought. then it would be more correct. to begin with abstract. to limit ourselves in relation to definition rather to what has been said. In order to arrive at the ‘concrete’. adhering to a certain tradition in Logic. if not wholly. and to start to consider ‘the gist of the matter’. To give a ‘definition’ of it here would be easy. simple definitions accepted as far as possible by everyone. At first glance it may seem that it is. and not simply a ‘reflection of the essential or intrinsic attributes of things’ (because here the meaning of the insidious words ‘essential’ and ‘intrinsic’ come to the fore). but the gist of the matter. but would it be of any use? If we. a study in the history of
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. tend to understand by ‘concept’ neither ‘sign’ nor ‘term defined through other terms’.

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. But the ‘historical’ collisions of realising the ‘matter of Logic’ is not an end-initself for us. also characterise out understanding of this science.philosophy. critically corrected and materialistically rethought by Marx. those very general outlines of dialectics as Logic which. but only the factual material through which the clear outlines of the ‘logic of Matter’ gradually Contribution show to through the Critique [See of Marx’s Hegel’s
Philosophy of Right]. Engels and Lenin.

The term ‘logic’ was first introduced for the science of thinking by the Stoics. is why we must go into the history of the matter. That.PART ONE FROM THE HISTORY OF DIALECTICS
1: Descartes & Leibnitz — The Problem of the Subject Matter and Sources of Logic The most promising means of resolving any scientific problem is the historical approach to it. The term itself was derived by them from the Greek word logos
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. In our case this approach proves a very essential one. Each of them. lays claim not so much simply to the title as to the right to be considered the sole modern stage in the development of world logical thought. who distinguished by it only that part of Aristotle’s actual teaching that corresponded to their own views on the nature of thinking. of course. therefore. The fact is that what are now called logic are doctrines that differ considerably in their understanding of the boundaries of this science.

progressive philosophers of the time. simply converted logic into a mere instrument (organon) for conducting verbal disputes. The emasculated ‘Aristotelean logic’ therefore also became discredited in the eyes of all leading scientists and philosophers of the new times. which is the reason why most of the philosophers of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries generally avoided using the term ‘logic’ as the name for the science of thought intellect. but also its very name. and the science so named was very closely related to the subject matter of grammar and rhetoric. who finally shaped and canonised the tradition. ‘The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give
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. and reason. Recognition of the uselessness of the official. and a purely formal apparatus. formal. The mediaeval scholastics. scholastic version of logic as the organon of real thought and of the development of scientific knowledge was the leitmotif of all the advanced.(which literally means ‘the word’). As a result not only did the official interpretation of logic become discredited. a tool for interpreting the texts of the Holy Writ.

and signs.’. names.’ Francis Bacon said [Novum Organum] ‘I observed in respect to Logic.
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.’ said Descartes. it was unanimously treated not as the science of thinking but as the science of the correct use of words. ‘that the syllogisms and the greater part of the other teaching served better in explaining to others those things that one knows (or like the art of Lully. Hobbes. at best. in enabling one to speak without judgment of those things of which one is ignorant) than in learning what is new. for example. And insofar as logic was preserved as a special science.stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search after truth. [An Essay Concerning Human Understanding] On this basis Descartes and Locke considered it necessary to classify all the problems of the old logic in the sphere of rhetoric. is but the Art of fencing with the little knowledge we have. without making any Addition to it. So it does more harm than good.’ [Discourse on Method] John Locke suggested that ‘syllogism.

did not jell at that level. a tendency that took final form in Hobbes. the principles of thinking in mathematical science merged in their eyes with the logical principles of thinking in general. In concluding his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Since they interpreted objective reality in an abstract. only purely quantitative characteristics were considered objective and scientific). the representatives of purely mechanistic views of the world and of thinking held such a view of logic. True.’ He treated logic as ‘the doctrine of signs’. fortunately. Locke defined the subject matter and task of logic as follows: ‘The business [of logic] is to consider the nature of signs the mind makes use of for the understanding of things. i.e.developed a conception of logic as the calculation of word signs. But philosophy. but not for the science of thinking. or conveying its knowledge to others. in general. as semiotics. geometrical way (i.
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.e. The best brains of the period understood very well that it might be all right for logic to be interpreted in that spirit.

in the terminology of the day. and that the exact language of ‘universal mathematics’ could only be something derived from ‘true philosophy’. unlike Hobbes. Both Descartes and Leibniz. They too took to the idea of creating a ‘universal mathematics’ in place of the old. in contemplation) and in general in
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. and they dreamed of instituting a universal language. a system of terms strictly and unambiguously defined.The approach of Descartes and Leibniz was much more careful. the bricks.e. Only then would one succeed in replacing thinking about the things given in reflection or imagination (i. but must only be the result of careful analysis of the simple ideas. and discredited logic. were well aware of the difficulties of principle standing in the way of realising such an idea. from which the whole intellectual edifice of man was built. Descartes understood that the definition of terms in the universal language could not be arrived at by amicable agreement. ridiculed. and therefore admitting of purely formal operations in it.

Leibniz categorically limited the field of application of the ‘universal mathematics’ solely to those things that belonged to the sphere of the powers of imagination. classified Locke’s treatment of logic. thus remained outside the competence of the ‘universal mathematics’. be only (so to say) a logic of the powers of imagination. by which it was understood as a special doctrine of signs. The ‘universal mathematics’ should also. in his view. as purely nominalist. with unconcealed irony. and action. Leibniz revealed the difficulties associated with such an
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. But that was precisely why all metaphysics was excluded from its province. and in drawing conclusions and inferences as infallible as the solutions of equations.people’s real sense experience by a kind of calculus of terms and statements. and also such things as thought. in any case. In supporting this point of Descartes’. commensurate only in reason. A very essential reservation! Thought. It is not surprising that Leibniz. and the field of ordinary mathematics.

The old logic thus corresponded simply to the terminological aspect of knowledge. even the best. of judgments and inventions. as Leibniz put it.understanding of logic. practical (ethics). moreover. which is something indeterminable and arbitrary. on the other hand. seems very different from recognition of the etymologies and usage of words. when one wants to explain words. he said. and terminological (logic). physics. of course. make an excursion into the sciences themselves as was seen in dictionaries. the ‘science of reasoning. namely theoretical (physics). and ethics) that Locke had taken over from the Stoics. under which the same knowledge. would function. and one must not. engage in a science without at the same time giving a definition of the terms. ‘arrangement by terms. Above all. was not
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. One must. the same truth. Such a systematisation.’ Instead of the threefold division of philosophy into different sciences (logic. or. as in a handbook’. Leibniz therefore suggested speaking of three different aspects.

because Leibniz had a more profound appreciation of thinking. And
constantly facing every theoretician lies in understanding what it is that links knowledge (the totality of concepts. And he classed the true doctrine of thought as metaphysics. in general. but of a definite way of approaching philosophical the solution of an the essential difficulty problem.a science of thought. in this sense following Aristotle’s terminology and the essence of his logic. of course. of indicating to which ‘department’ the theoretical understanding of thought ‘belonged’. theoretical constructions. and whether the one agrees with the other. lying outside his consciousness? And can that. how?
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. and ideas) and its subject matter together. and whether the concepts on which a person relies correspond to something real. and not the Stoics. But why should thought be investigated within the framework of ‘metaphysics’? It was not a matter. be tested? And if so.

it proves possible to back it up with very weighty arguments. because it is impossible to compare what I know with what I don’t know. The ‘existence’ of things outside consciousness is thus by no means necessarily rejected. is not quite so simple to prove. An affirmative answer. what I do not perceive. I must also be aware of the thing. the possibility of verifying whether or not such things are ‘in reality’ as we know and understand them. i. we know any object only in the form it acquires as a result of this refraction. One thing ‘only’ is rejected. Before I can compare my idea of a thing with the thing.e. and as for a negative answer. It is impossible to compare the thing as it is given in consciousness with the thing outside consciousness. for all its seeming obviousness. such as that. must also transform it into an idea.The problems are really very complicated. what I do not see. since an object is refracted in the course of its apprehension through the prism of the ‘specific nature’ of the organs of perception and reason. As a result I am always comparing and contrasting
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. what I am not aware of.

I am comparing the idea with the thing. In speaking of the distance of two things. To belong to space is their unity. In other words. naturally. or perches. we speak of their difference in space. The ‘specific’ property of the one and of the other cannot in general be involved in the comparison. we want to compare steaks and squares. Only similar objects. although I may think that .only ideas with ideas. And if.. Thus we equalise them as being both existences of space. can be compared and contrasted. and only after having them equalised sub specie spatii [under the aspect of space] we distinguish them as different points of space. poles. ‘What is the distance between the syllable A and a table? The question would be nonsensical. when we wish to establish a relation of some sort between two objects. all the same.. then we will no longer be comparing ‘steak and ‘square’ but two objects both possessing a geometrical. It is senseless to compare bushels and rods.. we always compare not the
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. or the taste of steak and the diagonal of a square. spatial form.

in spite of all their directly visible differences? If there is no such common substance.‘specific’ qualities that make one object ‘syllable A’ and the other a ‘table’. different from their existence as the things enumerated. In what are such objects as ‘concept’ (‘idea’) and ‘thing’ related? In what special ‘space’ can. in general. compared. a ‘third’ thing in which they are ‘one and the same’. and differentiated? Is there. the very differences between them become quite senseless. inherent in them as it were. but only those properties that express a ‘third’ something. So if there is no ‘third’ in the nature of the two things common to them both. they be contrasted. expressed by different means in an idea and in a thing. or a ‘square’. it is impossible to establish any intrinsically necessary relationship between them. The things compared are regarded as different modifications of this ‘third’ property common to them all. At best we can ‘see’ only an external relation in the nature of that which was once established between the position of luminaries in the heavens and events in personal
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. ‘steak’.

In its general form it is the central problem of any philosophy
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.lives. in general. But in the case of the relationship between an idea and reality there is yet another difficulty. the ‘third’ that appears one time as an idea and another time as being. and vice versa. but would constitute their common substance. each of which proceeds according to its own.e. an essence that would at once not be an idea and not material reality. relations between two orders of quite heterogeneous events. specific laws. can they be compared? In what. For an idea and being are mutually exclusive concepts. in general. How. can the basis of their interaction be. particular. what is that in which they are ‘one and the same’? This difficulty was sharply expressed in its naked logical form by Descartes. That which is an idea is not being. And then Wittgenstein would be right in proclaiming logical forms to be mystical and inexpressible. then. We know where the search for some sort of special essence can and does lead. i.

only in one’s thoughts.whatsoever. It is not necessary to be a philosopher to understand that. to put it in traditional philosophical language. The concept obviously is only a state of the special substance that fills the brain box (we could go on. but the
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. the problem of the relationship of ‘thought’ to the reality existing outside it and independently of it. explaining this substance as brain tissue or even as the very thin ether of the soul keeping house there. and another to have them only in one’s dreams. i. the problem of the coincidence of the forms of thought and reality. or dollars) in one’s pocket. or even as the formal structure of inner speech. in the form of which thinking takes place inside the head). furthermore. the problem of truth or. to the world of things in space and time. the ‘problem of the identity of thought and being’. as the structure of the brain tissue.e. It is clear to everyone that ‘thought’ and ‘things outside thought’ are far from being one and the same. Everyone knows that it is one thing to have a hundred roubles (or pounds.

and to take them into consideration. but are also directly opposite. on the other hand) nevertheless agree with one another? Descartes expressed the difficulty as follows. in what way do these two worlds (i. on the one hand. If the existence of things is determined through their extension and if the spatial. of the inner states of thought.e. and is something quite other than the internal state of thought. and the world of things in external space. geometric forms of things are the sole objective
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. ideas. the world of concepts. consistent intellect is especially needed in order to grasp the problem arising from this difficulty. the brain. it is not generally necessary to have Descartes’ mind. speech. in the space beyond the head. namely. etc.subject is outside the head. Descartes’ clear. but it is necessary to have its analytical rigour in order to define the fact that thought and the world of things in space are not only and not simply different phenomena. In order to understand such self-evident things clearly.

geometric image.forms of their existence outside the subject. because deduction requires a ‘mean term’. There is nothing common between thought and extension that could be expressed in a special definition. and vice versa. i. The spatial characteristic of thinking in general has no relation to its specific nature. a term such as might be included in the series of definitions of the idea
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. He also expressed this view in the following way: thought and extension are really two different substances. But if there is no such common attribute it is also impossible to deduce being rationally from thought. and a substance is that which exists and is defined only through itself and not through something else. in a series of definitions of thought there is not a single attribute that could be part of the definition of extension. The nature of thinking is disclosed through concepts that have nothing in common with the expression of any kind of spatial. and vice versa. then thinking is not disclosed simply through its description in forms of space.e. In other words.

as it were. Immediately a problem arises: how then are thought and bodily functions united in the human individual? That they are linked is an obvious fact.and
of
the
existence
of
things
outside
consciousness. causing alterations in the human organism
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. each revolves within itself. Thought as such cannot interact with the extended thing. nor the thing with thought. In view of the absence of such a boundary. Man can consciously control his spatially determined body among other such bodies. nor the thing the mental expression. They are free. nowhere encountering a boundary. and the movements of bodies. since their boundary (the line or even the point of contact) would then also be exactly that which simultaneously both divides them and unites them. Thought and being cannot in general come into contact with one another. outside thought. thought cannot limit the extended thing. his mental impulses are transformed into spatial movements. to penetrate and permeate each other.

i. for example a curve described in its equation.e. How can that be. each other? How does it come about that a trajectory. delimit. It is surely one and the same curve. proves to be congruent with the geometrical contours of the same curve in real space? It means that the form of the curve in thought (i. drawn by thought in the plane of the imagination. i. if ‘the thing in thought’ and ‘the thing outside thought’ are not only
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. in the form of the ‘magnitude’ of the algebraic signs of the equation) is identical with a corresponding curve in real space. I simultaneously act in the strictest accord with the shape (in this case the geometrical contour) of a thing outside thought. That means that thought and the extended body interact in some way after all.(sensations) are transformed into mental images.e. a curve drawn on paper in a space outside the head. therefore.e. But how? What is the nature of the interaction? How do they determine. only the one is in thought and the other in real space. acting in accordance with thought (understood as the sense of words or signs).

nothing identical? That is the problem around which all Cartesians spin. and the mass of their followers. these two worlds that have absolutely nothing in common. and from the Cartesian point of view on thought it is absolutely insoluble. and Geulincx. aimed and fired their
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. i.‘different’ but are also absolutely opposite? For absolutely opposite means exactly this: not having anything in ‘common’ between them. the defenders of the city undoubtedly saw the Turkish army as ‘transcendental Turks’. moreover. but those killed were very real Turks. How then can the two worlds conform with one another? And. nothing identical. not one attribute that could at once be a criterion of the concept ‘thing outside thought’ and of the concept ‘thing in thought’. or ‘imagined thing’. but systematically and regularly. Descartes himself. because the defenders of Vienna acted. and Malebranche. The difficulty here is clear. not accidentally. Malebranche expressed the principal difficulty arising here in his own witty way. as follows: during the siege of Vienna.e.

from our point of view it is inexplicable. and Geulincx. ‘soul’
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. and with trajectories calculated in their brains. God is the ‘third’ which. of phenomena that are absolutely contrary by definition. He makes the two opposing worlds agree. and the shots fell among real Turks in a space that was not only outside their skulls. congruence. and Malebranche. answered Descartes. the world in space? And why? God knows. namely the world ‘thought of’. and identity perhaps. unites and brings into agreement thought and being. and the real world. ‘transcendental Turks’. How does it come about that two worlds having absolutely nothing in common between them are in agreement. The concept ‘God’ comes in here as a ‘theoretical’ construction by which to express the obvious but quite inconceivable fact of the unity. the world in thought.cannonballs in accordance with the image of Turks that they had in their brains. Only God can explain this fact. as the ‘connecting link’. in accordance with ‘imagined’. but also outside the walls of the fortress.

the Cartesian school capitulated before theology and put the inexplicable (from their point of view) fact down to God. in inseparable and and necessary (and thus interconnection interaction
subordinated to some higher law and moreover. could therefore not explain in any rational way whatever the reason for the algebraic expression of a curve by means of an equation ‘corresponding’ to the spatial image of this curve in a drawing. and explained it by a ‘miracle’.and ‘body’. by the direct intervention of supernatural powers in the causal chain of natural events. geometrically defined bodies outside the head. yet are nevertheless in agreement with one another. indeed. action in the plane of signs and words and action in the plane of real.e. Descartes.
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. in unity. They could not. i. ‘concept’ and ‘object’. Having come directly up against the naked dialectical fact that ‘thought’ and ‘being outside thought’ are in absolute opposition. the founder of analytical geometry. one and the same law).

actions with signs and on the basis of signs.e. and therefore wholly governed by the laws of the ‘external’. in accordance with their real contours. ‘logical’ rules
any
external
determination and worked out exclusively by mathematicians themselves. are quite often apt to interpret them precisely so it becomes quite enigmatic and inexplicable why on earth the
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. following Descartes. spatially material world. If mathematical constructions constructions of the ‘free’ and of the are treated intellect as of creative
mathematicians. because according to Descartes. The first were pure actions of the soul (or thinking as such). (This problem is posed no less sharply today by the ‘philosophy of mathematics’. the second actions of the body repeating the contours (spatially geometric outlines) of external bodies.manage without God. actions in the ether of ‘pure thought’. in accordance only with signs (with their mathematical sense). had nothing in common with real bodily actions in the sphere of spatially determined things. i.

from the heights of his heavenly throne. and ‘extension’. God. by his intervention in the interrelations of ‘thought and being’.
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. numerical expressions with the results obtained by purely logical calculations and by the ‘pure’ actions of the intellect. the facts of ‘external experience’. Only ‘God’ can help. ruling both the ‘bodies’ and the ‘souls’ of men from outside. keep on agreeing and coinciding in their mathematical. It is absolutely unclear. and co-ordinating the actions of the ‘soul’ with those of the ‘body’.empirical facts. orthodox God. could be understood as the purely traditional Catholic. ‘body’) was also recognised by Descartes as a factual principle without it even his idea of an analytical geometry would have been impossible (and not only inexplicable) but it was explained by an act of God. moreover. in Cartesian philosophy. ‘soul and body’. ‘spirit’. and especially for Malebranche and Geulincx.) In other words the identity of these absolute opposites (‘thought’.

and hence not of the rules of operating with words or other signs. who not only knew how to pose problems with maximum clarity. comes down to solving the cardinal problems of philosophy. to put it in a rather old-fashioned way. And that assumes mastering the culture of the genuinely theoretical thinking represented by the classical philosophers. The problem of the theoretical understanding of thought (logic).Such
is
the
essence
of
the
famous
psychophysical problem. or of metaphysics.
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. consequently. but also knew how to solve them. in which it is not difficult to see the specifically concrete and therefore historically limited formulation of the central problem of philosophy.

was played by Spinoza. mathematical natural science was also foreign to him.2: Spinoza — Thought as an Attribute of Substance An immense role in the development of logic. a role far from fully appreciated. Like Leibniz. Any tendency directly to universalise partial forms and methods of thinking only useful within the bounds of mechanistic. Spinoza rose high above the mechanistic limitations of the natural science of his time. Spinoza treated it as an applied discipline by analogy with medicine. and in preparing the ground for modern views on its subject matter. Insofar as logic was preserved alongside the doctrine of substance. only as ‘modes of expression’ of the universal order and
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. since its concern proved not to be the invention of artificial rules but the co-ordination of human intellect with the laws of thought understood as an ‘attribute’ of the natural whole.

‘It is therefore worthy of note that thought must begin by placing itself at the standpoint of Spinozism. has not ceased to flog Spinoza as a ‘dead dog’. dialectically.connection of things. to be a follower of Spinoza is the essential commencement of all Philosophy.’ [Lectures on the History of Philosophy. He also tried to work out logical problems on the basis of this conception. he was probably the only one of the great thinkers of the pre-Marxian era who knew how to unite brilliant models of acutely dialectical thought with a consistently held materialist principle (rigorously applied throughout his system) of understanding thought and its relations to the external world lying in the space outside the human head. in essence. in alliance with subjective idealist philosophy. The influence of Spinoza’s ideas on the subsequent development of dialectical thought can hardly be exaggerated. which is why his figure presents special interest in the history of dialectics. Hegel] But orthodox religious scholasticism.
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. Spinoza understood thought much more profoundly and.

remain the most precious principles of any scientific thinking to this day. and as such are very heatedly disputed by our contemporary opponents of dialectical thought. which constitute the essential commencement of all Philosophy. the real foundation on which alone it is possible to erect the edifice of philosophy as a science. i. and to bring out the principles in it that. in rather different forms of expression perhaps.treating him as a living and dangerous opponent. are brilliant precisely 7in their crystal clarity. And in fact the principles of his thinking.e. and that obliges us to analyse the theoretical foundation of his conception very carefully.
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. Elementary analysis reveals that the main principles of Spinoza’s thought directly contradict the conception of ‘thought’ developed by modern positivism all along the line. The most modern systems of the twentieth century still clash in sharp antagonism in Spinoza. free of all reservations and ambiguities. Hegel once noted that Spinoza’s philosophy was very simple and easy to understand.

Our job then cannot be once more to paraphrase the theoretical foundations on which Spinoza built his main work. and their proofs. e.It is not so easy. Spinoza. ‘scholia’. the Ethics. Our job is to help
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. In other words. to bring these brilliant principles out because they are decked out in the solid armour of the constructions of formal logic and deductive mathematics that constitute the ‘shell’ of Spinoza’s system.’ Karl Marx wrote to Ferdinand Lassalle.g. however. the real inner structure of their system is quite distinct from the form in which they consciously presented it. the real logic of Spinoza’s thinking by no means coincides with the formal logic of the movement of his ‘axioms’. ‘theorems’. ‘Even with philosophers who gave their work a systematic form. and the conclusions that he drew from them by means of his famous ‘geometric modus’. In that case it would be more proper simply to copy out the text of the Ethics itself once again. its (so to say) defensive coat of mail.

and one way only. that still preserve their full topicality.e. which far from coincides with its formal exposition. Then it will become clear that Spinoza succeeded in finding the only formulation exact for his time of a real problem that remains the great problem of our day. only formulated in another form. That can only be done in one way. which is to show the real problem that Spinoza’s thought came up against quite independently of how he himself realised it and in what terms he expressed it for himself and for others (i. i. to set the problem out in the language of our century). and then to trace what were the real principles (once more independently of Spinoza’s own formulation of them) on which he based the solution of the problem. Spinoza found a very simple
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. or could be drawn from them. to see the real ‘cornerstone’ of his reflections and to show what real conclusions were drawn from them.e.the reader to understand the ‘real inner structure’ of his system. We formulated this problem in the preceding essay.

real thinking man. brilliant in its simplicity for our day as well as his: the problem is insoluble only because it has been wrongly posed. In fact. represented initially (and by definition) as different and even contrary principles allegedly existing separately from each other before the ‘act’ of this ‘uniting’ (and thus.solution to it. if such exists anywhere in the Universe). there simply is no such situation. the sole thinking body
41
. which is the thinking body of living. There are not two different and originally contrary objects of investigation body and thought. but only one single object. Living. only considered from two different and even opposing aspects or points of view. and therefore there is also no problem of ‘uniting’ or ‘co-ordination’ . one of the cornerstones of Christian theology and ethics). also being able to exist after their ‘separation’. There is no need to rack one’s brains over how the Lord God ‘unites’ ‘soul’ (thought) and ‘body’ in one complex. which is only another formulation of the thesis of the immortality of the soul. real man (or other analogous being.

It is not a special ‘soul’. installed by God in the human body as in a temporary residence. Thought is a property. That is what constitutes the real ‘keystone’ of the whole system. of the body. a very simple truth that is easy. but only two
42
. not two special objects. In relation to real man both the one and the other are equally fallacious abstractions. a mode of existence. capable of existing separately and quite independently of each other. This simple and profoundly true idea was expressed this way by Spinoza in the language of his time: thought and extension are not two special substances as Descartes taught. but only two attributes of one and the same organ. that thinks. does not consist of two Cartesian halves ‘thought lacking a body’ and a ‘body lacking thought’. the same as its extension.with which we are acquainted. i.e. to understand. but the body of man itself. and one cannot in the end model a real thinking man from two equally fallacious abstractions. on the whole. as its spatial configuration and position among other bodies.

geometric properties to Nature is. It is Nature that extends in space and ‘thinks’.e. two different modes of existence. The whole difficulty of the Cartesian metaphysics arose because the specific difference of the real world from the world as only imagined or thought of was considered to be extension. to deny it in advance one of its perfections. Ascribing only spatial. as the complete absence of any definite geometric shape. geometric determinateness. to think of it in an imperfect way. i. as Spinoza said. i.different and even opposite aspects under which one and the same thing appears. purely negatively.
43
. What is this third thing? Real infinite Nature. two forms of the manifestation of some third thing.e. a spatial. Spinoza answered. But extension as such just existed in imagination. And then it is asked how the perfection removed from Nature can be restored to her again. For as such it can generally only be thought of in the form of emptiness. only in thought.

physiology of the higher nervous system. and such like topics. In other words one can say very little about thought as such. and other related sciences that are forced one way or another to deal with the delicate theme of the relation of ‘thought’ to ‘body’.The
same
argumentation
applies
to
thought. bodies but only a mode of existence of Nature’s bodies. By a simple turn of thought Spinoza cut the Gordian knot of the ‘psychophysical problem’. psychology. the mystic insolubility of which still torments the mass of theoreticians and schools of philosophy. of ‘spiritual’ to ‘material’. Thought and space do not really exist by themselves. but only as Nature’s bodies linked by chains of interaction into a measureless and limitless whole embracing both the one and the other. of ‘ideal’ to ‘real’. it is not a reality existing separately from.
44
. a predicate. an attribute of that very body which has spatial attributes. and independently of. Thought as such is the same kind of fallacious abstraction as emptiness. In fact it is only a property.

are simply different modes of revealing a property inalienable from Nature as a whole. and that such posing of it is nothing hut the fruit of imagination. that very activity that we are accustomed to call ‘thinking’. Nature itself thinks. senses itself. and all the other special actions that Descartes described as modi of thought. And the ‘ reasoning’. source. in the form of man. is an action that is also expressed spatially. Nature thinks of itself. ‘will’. too. It is in man that Nature really performs.Spinoza showed that it is only impossible to solve the problem because it is absolutely wrongly posed. in a self-evident way. acts on itself. ‘consciousness’. But if thinking is always an action performed by a natural and so by a spatially determined body. it itself. and not at all some special substance. ‘sensation’. therefore. ‘idea’. one of its own attributes. In man. in his person. which is why there is not and cannot be the cause and effect relation
45
. In man. or principle instilled into it from outside. becomes aware of itself.

Between body and thought there is no relation of cause and effect. only exprecsed by two different modes or considered in two different aspects. because its very activity is thought. and cannot. The thinking body cannot cause changes in thought. it does not do so on thought.e. existing separately and therefore capable of interacting.between thinking and bodily action for which the Cartesians were looking. because its existence as ‘thinking’ is thought. of a spatially determinate body) to the mode of its own action. cannot act on thought. They did not find it for the simple reason that no such relation exists in Nature. If a thinking body does nothing. but the relation of an organ (i. Thought as a spatially expressed activity there fore cannot also be secreted from the body performing it as a special ‘substance’ distinct from the body. in the way that bile is secreted
46
. it is no longer a thinking body but simply a body. but one and the same thing. simply because thinking and the body are two different things at all. But when it does act.

change in some body or another. any change.from the liver or sweat from sweat glands. The product or result of thinking may be an exclusively spatially expressed. Thinking is not the product of an action but the action itself. mechanistic key. considered at the moment of its performance. and vice versa. is directly expressed for it as a certain change in its mode of activity. it transpires. It is absurd then to say that the one gives rise to (or ‘causes’) the other. And that is that.e. i. is the space walked. i. in thinking. The position set out here is extremely important also because it immediately excludes any possibility of treating it in a vulgar materialist. Thinking does not evoke a spatially expressed change in a body but exists through it (or within it).e. or exclusively geometrically stated. the ‘product’ of which. just as walking. or else in its position relative to other bodies. however fine. for example. of identifying thought with immaterial processes that take place
47
. induced by the effect on it of other bodies. is the mode of action of the legs. within that body.

or. Spinoza was well aware that what is expressed and performed in the form of structural. It is therefore impossible either to understand thought through examination. while nevertheless understanding that thought takes place precisely through these processes. only expressed by two different means. To try to explain the one by the other simply means to double the description of one
48
. of the spatially geometric changes in the form of which it is expressed within the body of the brain. It is impossible. geometric changes in the brain tissue from the most detailed consideration of the composition of the ideas existing in the brain. spatial changes within the thinking body is not at all some kind of thinking taking place outside of and independently of them. and vice versa (shifts of thinking by no means express immanent movements of the body within which they arise).within the thinking body (head. brain tissue). on the contrary. however exact and thorough. to understand the spatial. Spinoza constantly repeated. because they are one and the same.

Bishop Berkeley ascribed the cause to God. not yet understood and incomprehensible. vulgar materialist tries to explain everything by the purely mechanical actions of external things on the sense organs and brain tissue. equivalent to one another. which we
49
. that is affecting our bodily organisation at a given moment and causing corresponding changes in our body. Because the event twice described (once in the language of the ‘physics of the brain’ and once in the language of the ‘logic of ideas’) can be explained and correspondingly’ understood only after bringing out the cause evoking the event described but not understood. And although we have two full. And so did Descartes. the sole object.and the same fact. and takes for the cause the concrete thing. Malebranche. the event itself falls outside both descriptions. as the ‘third thing’. the very ‘one and the same’ that was not yet understood or explained. quite adequate descriptions of one and the same event. and Geulincx. The shallow.

To explain a separate. leaving in the dark the very difficulty that Descartes was forced to bring in God to explain. Spinoza took a very critical well superficially materialistmechanisticexplanation of the cause of thought. sensuously perceived fact passing momentarily before our eye.feel within ourselves and experience as our thinking. For to explain the event we call ‘thinking’. but far outside it. While rejecting the first explanation as the capitulation attitude as of philosophy toward before the religious theological twaddle. single. as the cause of thought means to explain precisely nothing. He very well understood that it was only a ‘bit’ of an explanation. For this very fact exerts its effect
50
. to disclose its effective cause. and even the whole mass of such facts. it is necessary to include it in the chain of events within which it arises of necessity and not fortuitously. The ‘beginnings’ and the ‘ends’ of this chain are clearly not located within the thinking body at all.

The explanation must consequently also include those relations of cause and effect that of necessity generate our own physical organisation capable (unlike a stone) of thinking.e. as the shapes of things outside the thinking body.
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. viz.(mechanical. the thinking substance or creature. the shape or form (i. as the lunar disc hanging in space outside the eye. say. which means that the Ego. For the action produced on the retina of our eye by a ray of light reflected from the Moon is perceived by the thinking being not simply as a mechanical irritation within the eye but as the shape of the thing itself. geometric configuration) and position of this external body. of so refracting the external influences and so transforming them within itself that they are experienced by the thinking body not at all only as changes arising within itself. but no action of any kind that we describe as ‘thinking’ is evoked in the stone. or light) on stone as well.e. but as external things. i. the spatial. directly feels not the effect produced on it by the external thing but something quite different.

though only general. It is difficult. and from the angle of purely physical concepts (and in Spinoza’s time of even ‘purely’ mechanical. geometric concepts) even impossible. theoretical solution. that Leibniz and Fichte came up against later. and not as its own shape. that is fully explained by the concepts of physics. In that lies both the enigma and the whole essence of thinking as the mode of activity of a thinking body in distinction to one that does not think. as its. He clearly understood that the problem could only be fully and finally solved by quite concrete investigation (including anatomical and
52
. It will readily be understood that one body evokes a change by its action in another body.which has been evoked within us as a result of the mechanical or light effect. Such was the enigma. to explain just why and how the thinking body feels and perceives the effect caused by an external body within itself as an external body. in general. and position in space. configuration.but Spinoza had already found a fully rational.

be performed? What can he say while remaining on the ground of firmly established facts known before and independently of any concrete. without plunging into a game of the imagination. or an anatomist. What can the philosopher say here categorically. or a physicist? Or rather. physiological investigation of the inner mechanisms of the
53
. and a fact calling for fundamental explanation and in a general way outlining paths for more concrete study in the future. in general. without trying to construct hypothetical mechanisms in the fancy by which the trick mentioned ‘might’. who remains a philosopher and does not become a physiologist. But that it did the trick that it saw the thing and not the changes in the particles of the retina and brain that this body caused by its light effect within the brain was an undoubted fact. truly mystically incomprehensible (from the angle of purely geometric concepts).physiological) of the material mechanism by which the thinking body (brain) managed to do the trick. what can he say.

more general namely relation philosophy as a special science to the concrete research of the natural sciences. there is another. or even in our day. the given. Spinoza’s position on this point cannot in principle be explained if we start from the positivist idea that philosophy has made all its outstanding achievements (and makes them) only by purely empirical ‘generalisation of the progress of its contemporary natural sciences’. and not capable either of being refuted or made doubtful by any further probing within the eye and the skull? In problem.thinking body. and when it did. in Spinoza’s time. Because natural science did not find the answers to the problem before us either in the seventeenth century. knew it only in a theological formulation. that partial. the
54
. the natural science of his day did not even suspect the existence of such a problem. As for the ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’. three hundred years later. psychic life. Furthermore. of the though very of characteristic case. and in general everything connected one way or another with ‘spiritual’.

religious. it is not difficult to imagine what he would have produced as a ‘system’. mystical ‘general ideas’ that were guiding all (or almost all) naturalists in his day. mathematical) world outlook. He would only have brought together the purely mechanical and religious.e.e. theological mysticism was the inevitable complement of a purely mechanistic (geometrical. interesting themselves exclusively in the mechanical characteristics of the surrounding world. And everything that was inexplicable on purely mechanical grounds was not subjected to scientific study at all but was left to the competence of religion. and humbly acknowledged its authority.
55
. Spinoza understood very clearly that religious.natural scientists of the time (even the great ones like Isaac Newton) found themselves prisoners of the prevailing (i. If Spinoza had in fact tried to construct his philosophical system by the method that our contemporary positivism would have recommended to him. Spiritual life they gladly left to the Church. i. theological) illusions.

’ [Dialectics of Nature] That is why Spinoza has come down in the history of science as an equal contributor to its progress with Galileo and Newton. but subjected this way of thinking to well substantiated criticism from the angle of the specific concepts of philosophy as a special science. His greatness was that he did not plod along behind contemporaneous natural science.e.the point of view that considers the sole ‘objective’ properties of the real world to be only the spatial. geometrical forms and relations of bodies. i. and that from Spinoza right to the great French materialists it insisted on explaining the world from the world itself and left the justification in detail to the natural science of the future. mechanistic thinking of the coryphaei of the science of the day. and not as
56
. behind the one-sided. This feature of Spinoza’s thinking was brought out clearly and explicitly by Frederick Engels: ‘It is to the highest credit of the philosophy of the time that it did not let itself be led astray by the restricted state of contemporary natural knowledge.

who wrote that he would have liked ‘old Spinoza’ as the umpire in his dispute with Niels Bohr on the
57
. and did not generalise the results and ready-made findings of other people’s investigation. including all the illusions and prejudices incorporated in them. and armed future science with them. That is why he also developed ‘general ideas and methods of thought’ to which the natural science of the day had not yet risen. philosophical angle. which recognised his greatness three centuries later through the pen of Albert Einstein. repeating after them the general ideas that could be drawn from their work. He understood that that way led philosophy up a blind alley.their epigone. or the methodology and logic of his contemporary science. He investigated reality himself from the special. did not bring together the general ideas of the science of his day and the methods of investigation characteristic of it. and condemned it to the role of the wagon train bringing up in the rear of the attacking army the latter’s own ‘general ideas and methods’.

who were contending for the role of the ‘philosopher of modern science’ and spoke disdainfully of Spinoza’s philosophy as an ‘outmoded’ point of view ‘which neither science nor philosophy can nowadays accept’. This solution immediately rejected possible interpretation
58
. which Spinoza formulated in the form of the thesis that thought and extension are not two substances.e. Spinoza’s understanding of thinking as the activity of that same nature to which extension also belonged is an axiom of the true modern philosophy of our century. kind of can hardly be and exaggerated. to which true science is turning more and more confidently and consciously in our day (despite all the attempts to discredit it) as the point of view of true materialism. outside the head of man). but only two attributes of one and every the same substance.fundamental problems of quantum mechanics rather than Carnap or Bertrand Russell. The brilliance of the solution of the problem of the relation of thinking to the world of bodies in space outside thought (i.

It is not fortuitous that Spinoza’s profound idea only first found true appreciation by the dialectical materialists Marx and Engels. to the thesis that pure thought is the active cause of all the changes occurring in the ‘thinking body of man’. in the matter of the brain and sense organs. on the decisive point. i. Even Hegel found it a hard nut to crack. in actions and their results.investigation
of
thought
by
the
logic
of
spiritualist and dualist constructions.e. selecting the body of man and his brain as the most suitable and malleable material. In fact. all talk of
59
. he returned again to the position of Descartes. in language. All talk about an idea that first arises and then tries to find material suitable for its incarnation. including in that the instruments of labour and historical events. From Spinoza’s standpoint thought before and outside of its spatial expression in the matter proper to it simply does not exist. so making it possible to find a real way out both from the blind alley of the dualism of mind and body and from the specific blind alley of Hegelianism.

In other words.). What is thought then? How are we to find the true answer to this question. from Spinoza’s point of view. i. in deeds and their results. in order to define it. is simply senseless or. therefore. namely: if thought is the mode of action of the thinking body. and later in actions. all such talk. in ‘terms’ and ‘statements’. what is the same thing. we are bound to investigate the mode of action of the
60
.e. fantasy. simply the atavism of religious theological ideas about the ‘incorporeal soul’ as the active cause of the human body’s actions. to give a scientific definition of this concept. and can then ‘express itself’ in that body’s actions. etc. the sole alternative to Spinoza’s understanding proves to be the conception that an idea can ostensibly exist first somewhere and somehow outside the body of the thought and independently of it. and not simply to list all the actions that we habitually subsume under this term (reasoning.thought first arising and then ‘being embodied in words’. will. then. as Descartes did? One quite clear recommendation follows from Spinoza’s position.

the material mechanisms by which it is effected. but even the fullest answers to it have no direct bearing on the answer to the question ‘What is thought?’.e. Because that is another question. is no longer a thinking body but simply a ‘body’. One does not ask how legs capable of walking are constructed.thinking hody very thoroughly. is a most interesting scientific question. in contrast to the mode of action (mode of existence and movement) of the non-thinking body. Investigation of all the material (i. anatomical. albeit inseparable from. but in what walking consists. What is thinking as the action of. in the
61
. yet not in any way identical with mechanisms themselves? In the one case the question is about the structure of an organ. physiological study of the brain. Because the thinking body. spatially defined) mechanisms by which thought is effected within the human body. of course. i.e. when it is inactive. and in no case whatsoever to investigate the structure or spatial composition of this body in an inactive state.

is that the former actively builds (constructs) the shape
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. of the function that the organ performs. must be such that it can carry out the appropriate function. In order to understand the mode of action of the thinking body it is necessary to consider the mode of its active. and not its inner structure. quite clearly noted by Descartes and the Cartesians. The cardinal distinction between the mode of action of a thinking body and that of any other body. as a description of the real thing that it does. causal interaction with other bodies both ‘thinking’ and ‘non-thinking’. The structures. however. legs are built so that they can walk and not so that they can think.e. a description of it in an inactive state. The fullest description of the structure of an organ. not the spatial geometric relations that exist between the cells of its body and between the organs located within its body. but not understood by them. of course. i.other about the function the organ performs. has no right to present itself as a description. however approximate.

Thus the human hand can perform movements in the form of a circle. specific form of the activity of a thinking body consists consequently in universality. The proper. and for that very reason is capable of performing any action.(trajectory) of its own movement in space in conformity with the shape (configuration and position) of the other body.e. or a square. or any other intricate geometrical figure you fancy. which describe circles much more accurately than the hand but cannot draw
63
. of a device structurally adapted to some one limited range of action even better than a human. i. coordinating the shape of its own movement (its own activity) with the shape of the other body. say. whatever it is. In this it differs. but for that very reason unable to do ‘everything else’. in that very property that Descartes actually noted as the chief distinction between human activity and the activity of an automaton copying its appearance. so revealing that it was not designed structurally and anatomically in advance for any one of these ‘actions’. from a pair of compasses.

the thinking body. in the form of the simplest and most obvious case) is determined by its own inner construction by its ‘nature’. He does not wait until the insurmountable resistance of other bodies forces him to turn off from his path. The capacity of a thinking body to mould its own action actively to the shape of any other body. the action of a body that ‘does not think’ (if only in the formn of spatial movement. however. and is quite uncoordinated with the shape of the other bodies among which it moves. Man.the outlines of triangles or squares.
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. Spinoza considered to be its distinguishing sign and the specific feature of that activity that we call ‘thinking’ or ‘reason’. It therefore either disturbs the shapes of the other bodies or is itself broken in colliding with insuperable obstacles. In other words. the thinking body goes freely round any obstacle of the most complicated form. to coordinate the shape of its movement in space with the shape and distribution of all other bodies. builds his movement on the shape of any other body.

The actions of animals. especially of the higher animals. i. movement) of the body evoked by the external effect. For Descartes the animal was only an automaton.e. under Spinoza’s definition of thinking. which presents very real interest. The last represents the response (action. But man is not divided from the lower creatures at all by that impassable boundary that Descartes drew between them by his concept of ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’. and manifests itself to the maximum in man. This is a very important point. therefore. in any case much more so than in any other creature known to us. as such. all its actions were determined in advance by ready-made structures. which in essence is only
65
. though to a limited degree. and by the distribution of the organs located within its body. internally inherent to it.This capacity. These actions. are also subsumed. has its own gradations and levels of ‘perfection’. could and had to be completely explained by the following scheme: external effect movement of the inner parts of the body external reaction.

There is a full analogy with the working of a self-activating mechanism (pressure on a button working of the parts inside the mechanism movement of its external parts). in the chain of external effect working of the inner bodily organs according to a ready-made scheme structurally embodied in them external reaction) that powerfully interferes with it.e. Such in general. as Descartes himself so well understood. This explanation excluded the need for any kind of ‘incorporeal soul’. everything was beautifully explained without its intervention. breaking the readymade chain and then joining its disconnected ends together in a new way. following the scheme rigidly programmed in its construction. is the theoretical scheme of a reflex that was developed two hundred years later in natural science in the work of Sechenov and Pavlov. each time in a
66
. and on the whole. But this scheme is not applicable to man because in him. there is a supplementary link in the chain of events (i. forces its way into it.transformed by the working of the inner parts of the body.

and actively correcting. i. each time in accordance with new conditions and circumstances in the external action not previously foreseen by any prepared scheme and this supplementary link is ‘reflection’ or ‘consideration’. even designing all over again. But a ‘reflection’ is that activity (in no way outwardly expressed) which directs reconstruction of the very schemes of the transformation of the initial effect into response. but considers the scheme of the forthcoming action critically. as soon as he experiences an effect from outside.different way. elucidating each time how far it corresponds to the needs of the new conditions. he does not act immediately according to any one prepared scheme. Here the body itself is the object of its own activity. like an automaton or an animal.e. the whole set-up and scheme of the future
67
. Before he responds he contemplates. Man’s ‘response’ mechanisms are by no means switched on just as soon as ‘the appropriate button is pressed’.

’For while reason is a universal instrument which can serve for all contingencies.actions
in
accordance
with
the
external
circumstances and the forms of things. But that is impossible to provide for in advance in the form of ready-made. ‘contemplation’) must be capable of an infinite number of actions. these [’bodily’] organs have need of some special adaptation for every particular action. For that reason he was unable to conceive of the organ of thought bodily. And since the forms of things and the circumstances of actions are in principle infinite in number. Thinking is the capacity of actively building and reconstructing schemes of external action in accordance with any new circumstances. as many ready-made. Because. bodily programmed schemes. as structurally organised in space.’ Descartes wrote.e. structurally programmed patterns of action would have to be postulated in it as there
68
. and does not operate according to a prepared scheme as an automaton or any inanimate body does. the ‘soul’ (i. in that case.

does not mean impossible ‘from the aspect of morals’ or of ‘moral principles’. But why not suppose that the organ of thought. an infinite number. was capable of
69
. (The adverb ‘morally’ in Descartes’ statement. etc.e.. each time taking account again of any of the infinite conditions and circumstances of the external action.’ Descartes said.) Spinoza counted the considerations that drove Descartes to adopt the concept of ‘soul’ to be quite reasonable. of course. moralement in French meaning ‘mentally’ or ‘intellectually’ in general.’ i. that is. ‘From this it follows. in principle. that it is morally impossible that there should be sufficient diversity in any machine to allow it to act in all the events of life in the same way as our reason causes us to act.were external bodies and combinations of external bodies and contingencies that the thinking body would generally encounter in its path. while remaining wholly corporeal and therefore incapable of having schemes of its present and future actions readymade and innate within it together with its bodily-organised structure.

It is necessary to elucidate and discover in the thinking thing those very structural features that enable it to perform its specific function. Even more so.e. study in particular of the body of the brain. to act according to the
70
. that not having any ready-made schemes of action within it. i. the only functional definition of thinking corresponding to the facts that it was impossible to deduce from structural analysis of the organ in which and by means of which it (thinking) was performed. a functional definition of thinking as action according to the shape of any other thing also puts structural. it acted for that very reason in accordance with whatever scheme was dictated to it at a given moment by the forms and combinations of other bodies located outside it? For that was the real role or function of the thinking thing. spatial study of the thinking thing on the right track.e. i.actively building them anew each time in accordance with the forms and arrangement of the ‘external things’? Why not suppose that the thinking thing was designed in a special way.

or its definition as the active function of a natural body organised in a special way. and which excludes any possibility of interpreting thinking and the matter of its relation to the brain by the logic of either spiritualist and dualist constructions or of vulgar mechanistic ones.e. In order to understand thought as a function.the organ in and by which this function is performed) to make a really scientific investigation of the problem of thought. functional definition of thought.scheme of its own structure but according to the scheme and location of al other things. In that form the materialist approach to the investigation of thought comes out clearly. which prompts both logic (the system of functional definitions of thought) and brain physiology (a system of concepts reflecting the material structure of. it is necessary to go beyond the bounds of considering what goes on inside the thinking body. including its own body. i. as the mode of action of thinking things in the world of all other things. and how
71
. Such is the truly materialist.

e. but any object in general. the system of relations ‘thinking body and its object’. ‘God’). is not any single object or other in accordance with whose form the thinking body’s activity is built in any one specific case. moreover. and correspondingly any possible ‘meaningful act’ or action in accordance with the form of its object. i. But if we examine a system of smaller volume and scale. i.e. then we shall not arrive at what thought is in general (thought in the whole fullness of its possibilities associated with its nature). What we have in mind here.(whether it is the human brain or the human being as a whole who possesses this brain is a matter of indifference). and to examine the real system within which this function is performed. the relations of the thinking body with as wide a sphere of ‘things’ and their forms as you like. but only at that limited mode of thinking
72
. but still limited. Thought can therefore only be understood through investigation of its mode of action in the system thinking body nature as a whole (with Spinoza it is ‘substance’.

that happens in a given case. not as a partial case. is constantly being extended. at the given moment. but only currently. anatomical organisation with any partial mode of action whatsoever (with any partial form of the external bodies). and actively and plastically adapting itself to them.
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. Thus he affirmed. embracing ever newer and newer things and forms of things. The whole business consists in this. in the language of his day. Its mode of action has a clearly expressed universal character. That is why Spinoza also defined thought as an attribute of substance. only its modus (in Spinoza’s parlance) as scientific definitions of thought in general.e. within which thought was found of necessity and not fortuitously (which it may or may not be). and by no means originally or forever. and not as its modus. i. It is linked with them. that the thinking body (in accordance with its nature) is not linked at all by its structural. that the single system. and we shall therefore be taking only definitions of a partial case of thinking.

however.was not a single body or even as wide a range of bodies as you wished. including thought. of absolute necessity. even the human body. The crossing and combination of masses of chains of cause and effect could lead in one case to the appearance of a thinking body and in another case simply to a body. although it did not realise this perfection in any single body and at any moment of time. In defining thought as an attribute Spinoza towered above any representative of mechanistic materialism and was at least two centuries in advance of his time in putting forward a thesis that Engels expressed in rather different words: ‘The point is. Only nature as a whole was that system which possessed all its perfections. that mechanism (and also the materialism of the eighteenth century) does not get away from abstract necessity. a stone. etc. a tree. The individual body possessed thought only by virtue of chance or coincidence. but only and solely nature as a whole. and hence
74
. did not possess thought one whit of necessity. or in any of its ‘modi’. So that the individual body.

That matter evolves out of itself the thinking human brain is for him [Haeckel] a pure accident. those properties that are reproduced in its makeup of necessity and not by a chance. step by step. possesses at any moment of time. Yes.’ [Dialectics of Nature] That is what distinguishes materialism. where it happens. But the truth is that it is in the nature of matter to advance to the evolution of thinking beings. sensible and dialectical. hence. this always necessarily occurs wherever the conditions for it (not necessarily identical at all places and times) are present.i. understood as an infinite whole in space and time. only Nature as a whole. miraculous
75
.e. too. namely that which is described in the language of mechanistically interpreted physics and mathematics. . from mechanistic materialism that knows and recognises only one variety of ‘necessity’. though not at any point of space.not from chance either. all the wealth of its attributes. although necessarily determined. generating its own partial forms from itself.

Hence it inevitably follows logically. as in any other possible thinking creature. "old Spinoza was quite right". and therefore. the thinking mind. the same matter thinks as in other cases (other modi) only ‘extends’ in the form of stones or any other ‘unthinking body’. a circumstance that seemingly gave Engels grounds for replying categorically and unambiguously to Plekhanov when he asked: ‘So in your opinion old Spinoza was right in saying that thought and extension were nothing but two attributes of one and the same substance?’ "Of course." answered Engels. it must somewhere else and at another time again produce it.’ Spinoza’s definition means the following: in man.coincidence that might just as well not have happened. as Engels said. that thought in fact
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. that with the same iron necessity that it will exterminate on the earth its highest creation. that none of its attributes can ever be lost. also.’ That was Spinoza’s standpoint. ‘that matter remains eternally the same in all its transformations.

be falling one-sidedly. And if we deny matter this most important of its attributes. and it (thought) is matter’s own perfection. a property akin to sensatlon though not identical with it. And then. methodological position that later allowed Lenin to declare that it was reasonable to assume. Marx and Plekhanov (all great ‘Spinozists’) and even the young Schelling. as Spinoza put it. is the highest form of development of this universal property or attribute. we shall be thinking of matter itself ‘imperfectly’. into interpreting nature as a
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. understood Spinoza . That is how Herder and Goethe. continually incorrectly.cannot be separated from world matter and counterposed to it itself as a special. as Engels and Lenin wrote. or simply. is the general. Thought. La Mettrie and Diderot. Such. as the very foundation of matter. the property of reflection. we should Berkeleianism. incorporeal ‘soul’. too. as a result. let us emphasise once more. extremely vital for matter. into the most and real mechanistically. according to Lenin.

e. did not possess just the single attribute of ‘being extended’ but also possessed many other properties and attributes as inalienable from it (inseparable from it though separable from any ‘finite’ body). meant simply to represent it incorrectly. but in no case was it identical with it. That is why Spinoza too said that substance. Spinoza said more than once that it was impermissible to represent thought as attribute in the image and likeness of human thought.complex of our sensations. Because Berkeleianism too is the absolutely inevitable complement making good of a onesided. i. mechanistic understanding of nature. the world as and how we know it).e. or ‘particular case. including human thought. the universal world matter. To represent thought in general in the image and likeness of existing human thought.
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. in ‘an incomplete way’. of its modus. it was only the universal property of substance that was the basis of any ‘finite thought’. as the bricks or elements absolutely specific to the animated being from which the whole world of ideas is built (i.

Error (and hence
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. Spinoza s teaching took all the sense out of the very distinguishing of ‘good and evil’. and in numerous letters. With that Spinoza also linked his profound theory of truth and error. If the mode of action of the thinking body as a whole is determined in the form of an ‘other’. In fact. Tractatus de intellectus ernendatione. how ever are we to recognise error? The question was posed then with special sharpness because it appeared in ethics and theology as the problem of ‘sin’ and ‘evil’. Tractatus theologico-politicus. ‘truth and error’. developed in detail in the Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (Ethics). of its far from most perfected image (although the most perfected known to us). and not of the immanent structure of ‘this’ body. ‘sin and righteousness.by a ‘model’. The criticism of Spinozism from the angle of theology was invariably directed at this point. in what then did they differ? Spinoza’s answer again was simple. so to say. the problem arises. like any fundamentally true answer.

and that meant that the narrower the sphere of the natural whole with which the person was concerned. It is understandable why Spinoza put so low a value on acting by abstract. i. formal deduction based on an abstract universal. could be a quite accidental property and form of the thing. But it. ‘imperfect’ in itself. the greater was the measure of error and the smaller the measure
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. Error.e. What was fixed in the abstract ‘idea’ was what most often struck the eye. consequently. when the relative was taken for the absolute. And if a person transferred this mode of action to another thing.‘evil’ and ‘sin’) was not a characteristic of ideas and actions as regards their own composition. and was not a positive attribute of them. fortuitous. but the questlon was what the thing was. The erring man also acted in strict accordance with a thing’s form. formal analogy. the mode of action adapted to it would also be imperfect. of course. only began when a mode of action that was limitedly true was given universal significance. he would slip up. If it were ‘trivial’.

if they were built in accordance with the absolutely universal necessity of the natural whole and not simply with some one of its limited forms. of course. For that very reason the activity of the thinking body was in direct proportion to the adequateness of its ideas. when his actions conformed with all the conditions that the infinite aggregate of interacting things. the more adequate were his ideas.of truth.e. the greater was the power of the nearest. Real earthly man was. the more actively he extended the sphere of nature determining his activity. i. and the attribute of thought was therefore only
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. still very. Man’s thinking could achieve ‘maximum perfection’ (and then it would be identical with thought as the attribute of substance) only in one case. and the more his mode of action was determined by the chance form of things. and of their forms and combinations. The complacent position of the philistine was therefore the greatest sin. conversely. purely external circumstances over him. very far from that. The more passive the person. imposed on them.

theoretical definition of thinking as an attribute of substance poses some sort of ideal model. however often encountered. As such it had immense significance. In order to disclose the really general. to which man can and must endlessly approximate.realised in him in a very limited and ‘imperfect’ (finite) form. and it would be fallacious to build oneself an idea of thinking as an attribute of substance in the image and likeness of finite human thought. and not one of its ‘partial forms’. though never having the power to bring himself up to it in level of ‘perfection’. Every ‘finite’ thing was correctly understood only as a ‘fading moment’ in the bosom of infinite substance.truly universal forms of things in accordance with
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. For finite thought the philosophical. On the contrary one’s finite thought must be built in the image and likeness of thought in general. should be given universal significance. That is why the idea of substance and its all-embracing principle of necessity the functioned as the or constant
perfecting
improvement of intellect.

an absolutely empty determination in no way disclosing the nature of the one or the other.which the ‘perfected’ thinking body should act. through real understanding of their mode of interaction within nature. Only by proceeding from the idea of
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. another criterion and another mode of knowledge than formal abstraction was required.e. universal) relation between thought and spatial. i. The idea of substance was not formed by abstracting the attribute that belonged equally to extension and thought. the idea of substance arrived at. This is a profoundly dialectical point.e. geometric reality could only be understood. without assuming which it was impossible in principle to understand the mode of the interaction between the thinking body and the world within which it operated as a thinking body. Spinoza’s whole doctrine was just the disclosure of this ‘infinite’ relation. The abstract and general in them was only that they existed. Substance thus proved to be an absolutely necessary condition. The really general (infinite. existence in general. i.

But. to a theologically interpreted ‘God. one and the same contour. Rather the contrary. of the form of its own movement along the contours of external objects. In creating an adequate idea of itself. On Spinoza’s lips intuitive knowledge was a synonym of rational understanding by the
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. Spinoza called the mode of knowledge or cognition described here ‘intuitive’. In this understanding of the intuitive there was nothing resembling subjective introspection. any other way it could not understand either the one or the other and was forced to resort to the idea of an outside power.e. the thinking body thus also created an adequate idea of the forms and contours of the objects themselves. i. having once understood the mode of its actions (i. thought). the thinking body just so comprehended substance as the absolutely necessary condition of interaction with the external world. to a miracle. Because it was one and the same form.e.substance could the thinking body understand both itself and the reality with and within which it operated and about which it thought.

e. in contrast to the feeble eclectic formula (often fobbed off dialectics) that ‘both unity and plurality’. These bodies are as real as the unity (identity) of their ‘nature’ expressed by the definition in the ‘attribute of thought’ and by real diversity in the ‘attribute of extension’ Variety and plurality are clearly understood here as modes of realisation of their own opposition i. ‘both identity and
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. of the identity and unity of their ‘nature’. From that followed the consistent materialist conclusion that ‘the true definition of any one thing neither involves nor expresses anything except the nature of the thing defined’. In giving itself a rational account of what and how it did in fact operate. [Ethics] That is why there can only be one correct definition (idea) in contrast and in opposition to the plurality and variety of the individual bodies of the same nature. That is a distinctly dialectical understanding of the relation between them.thinking body of the laws of its own actions within nature. the thinking body at the same time formed a true idea of the object of its activity.

arrives safely at exactly the contrary (compared with Spinoza’s solution). And it then generally becomes impossible to consider the ‘definition of the concept’ as the determination of the nature of the defined thing. Talk of the objective identity. sensuously given variety. The starting point then proves to be not the ‘identity and unity’ of the phenomena but in fact the ‘variety and plurality’ of isolated facts allegedly existing originally quite ‘independently’
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. of the nature of a given range of various and opposing single phenomena thus safely boils down to talk about the purely formal unity (i. at the idea that ‘the definition of a concept’ is a verbally fixed form of expression in consciousness.difference. in the idea of a real. formally subsumed under ‘concept’.e. Because eclectic pseudodialectics. purely external identity) of sensuously contemplated. existing outside the head. when it comes down to solving the problem of knowledge and of ‘definition’ or ‘determination’. similarity.equally really exist. empirically given things. of isolated facts.

The ultimate basis for this view is the belief that every proposition has a single subject and a single predicate. Hence it is not difficult to understand why Neopositivists are dissatisfied with Spinoza and attack the logical principle of his thinking. but must do so. namely.of one another.’ The alternative to Spinoza’ s view. is the affirmation that any ‘part’ of the world is not only ‘capable’ of ‘existing’ independently of all other parts. that the world as a whole is a single substance. ‘Spinoza’s metaphysic is the best example of what may be called "logic monism" the doctrine. tied together as it were with string. in fact. As another
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. none of whose parts are logically capable of existing alone. and later only formally united. which leads us to the conclusion that relations and plurality must be illusory. by the ‘unity of the concept’ and the ‘identity of the name’. So the sole result proves to be the identity in consciousness (or rather in name) of the initially heterogeneous facts. and their purely verbal ‘unity’.

and everything else remain the same’. under one and the same ‘general’. and so ‘any one can either be the case or not be the case. description) remains ‘correct’ even given the condition that there are no other facts in general.
conglomeration. by virtue of which ‘the world divides into facts’. The determination (definition. i. according to the ‘metaphysic of Neopositivism’. the external world must be considered some a kind simple of immeasurable of
accumulation. always turns out to be something quite arbitrary or ‘previously agreed upon’. ‘the world is the totality of facts not of things’.
‘atomic facts’ absolutely independent of each other. The ‘general’.authority of this trend postulated it. interpreted only as the ‘meaning of the term or sign’. In other words.e. [Wittgenstein] Thus. the ‘proper determination’ of each of which is bound to be absolutely independent of the determination of any other fact. verbal uniting of a handful of odd facts by subsuming them under one and the same term. ‘a scientific consideration of the world’ consists in a purely formal.
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.

That is not at all like Spinoza. It is not true. moreover. general nature things. ‘identical’. For him the ‘general’. that ‘relations and plurality must be illusory’ for Spinoza. by its subject-predicate structure (as Russell put it).‘conventional’.
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. that he should have stooped so low to discredit the ‘concept of substance’ in the eyes of ‘modern science’ as ‘incompatible with modern logic and with scientific method’. The ‘general’ (unity and identity) as the sole result of the ‘scientific logical’ treatment of the ‘atomic facts’. as Russell said. ‘united’ were by no means illusions created only by our speech (language). and nothing more. conventional meaning of the term. is consequently not the result at all. and the affirmation of it is on Russell’s conscience. Spinoza’s position. And that nature must find its verbal expression in a correct definition of the concept. but a previously established. of course. but primarily the real. had no connection with this principle of ‘logical analysis’ of the phenomena given in contemplation and imagination.

the principle of substance. in fact. i. with his principles of the development of scientific definitions.e. is independent of our illusions? I do not know and I don’t want to know. and both existed in ‘God’. were them) For not and ‘relations plurality’ described
Russell
‘identity and unity’ were not illusions created soli by the ‘subject-predicate structure’ (as Russell himself thought).e.One thing. of the general nature of things). both the one and the other were equally illusions. in the very nature of things. quite irrespective of whatever the verbal structures of the so-called ‘language of science’ were. But what. But for Bertrand Russell. however. Both the one and the other were wholly real. was an illusion created by language and ‘relations and plurality’ were illusions created by our own sensuality. I don’t want to know
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. ‘Identity’ (i. is beyond doubt here: what Russell called ‘modern logic and scientific method’ really is incompatible with the logic of Spinoza’s thinking. with his understanding Spinoza ‘illusory’ (as of ‘correct and definitions’.

For here a choice
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. Russell answered. Berkeley and Hume also primarily attacked the whole concept of substance. Because there is a really unpersuasive alternative here. trying to explain it as the product of an ‘impious mind’. because it was still not known if God himself existed. answered Russell. namely two polar and mutually exclusive solutions of one and the same problem the problem of the relation of ‘the world in consciousness’ (in particular in ‘correct definition’) to the ‘world outside consciousness’ (outside ‘verbal definition’). though not risking to affirm categorically after him that ‘God’ in fact ‘knew’ it. But what is there besides this ‘world’? God only knows. word for word repeating Bishop Berkeley’s thesis. There we have the polar contrast of the positions of Spinoza and of Berkeley and Hume (whom the Neopositivists are now trying to galvanise back to life). I know only what is the ‘world’ given to me in my sensations and perceptions (where it is something ‘plural’) and in my language (where it is something ‘identical’ and related).because I cannot.

in the form of ideas. Spinoza drew the following direct conclusion: ‘All these things sufficiently show that every one judges things by the constitution of his brain. not the thing itself and its proper form. including man as part of it. or it must be interpreted as a complex of one’s sensations. must be understood through the logic of the ‘concept of substance’. in the form of which this thing is represented ‘within us’. But let us return to consideration of Spinoza’s conception. Spinoza well understood all the sceptical arguments against the possibility of finding a single one correct definition of the thing that we are justified in taking as a definition of the nature of the thing itself and not of the specific state and arrangement of the organs within ourselves. In considering different variants of the interpretation of one and the same thing. or rather accepts the affections of his imagination in the place of things.
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.must be made: either nature. but only the inner state that the effect of the external things evoked in our body (in the corpus of the brain).’ In other words. we have within us.

was built and tuned differently. moreover. and therefore judges things in conformity with the specific state evoked in his brain and sense organs by an external effect in no way resembling that state. ‘For every one has heard the expressions: So many heads. The brain of every person. two quite dissimilar things are muddled and mixed up: the form of our own body and the form of the bodies outside it. Spinoza gave full consideration to the Cartesians’ argument (later taken up by Bishop Berkeley).Therefore. Each is wise in his own manner. so many ways of thinking. The naive person immediately and uncritically takes this hybrid for an external thing. in the ideas we directly have of the external world. that toothache was not at all identical in geometric form to a dentist’s drill and even to the geometric form of the changes the drill produced in the tooth and the brain. Differences of brains are not less common than
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. from which we get the sceptical conclusion of the plurality of truths and of the absence of a truth one and the same for all thinking beings.

in the form of geometric changes in the body of our brain and its microstructures. But how is that to be done? Perhaps. of its sense organs and brain into the pure form of the thing: But (1) we know as little of how our brain is constructed and what exactly it introduces into the composition of the idea of a thing as we know of the external body itself. in order to obtain the pure form of the thing.’ The point is this to understand and correctly determine the thing itself.e. i. and not the means by which it is represented inside ourselves. it is simply necessary to ‘subtract’ from the idea all its elements that introduce the arrangement (disposition) and means of action of our own body. its proper form. If we ‘subtract’ everything
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. and imagine rather than understand things. and (2) the thing in general cannot be given to us in any other way than through the specific changes that it has evoked in our body. all which maxims show that men decide upon matters according to the constitution of their brains.differences of taste.

comes into a state fully identical with the form of the circle outside my body. into a state of real action in the form of a circle. and brain. i.e. However differently from any other thing man’s body and brain are built they all have something in common with one another. we get pure nothing. So it is impossible to proceed that way. according to Spinoza. sense organs.received from the thing in the course of its refraction through the prism of our body. This can be represented quite clearly. no idea of any kind. moreover. the real activity of our body that we call ‘thinking’. ‘Within us’ there remains nothing. When I describe a circle with my hand on a piece of paper (in real space). In other words an adequate idea only the conscious state of ourbody identical in form with the thing.e.
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. and the awareness of this state (i. and it is to the finding of this something common that the activity of reason is in fact directed. which is. ‘adequate’ . my body. My body (my hand) really describes a circle. of the form of my own action in the form of the thing) is also the idea. outside the body.

And since ‘the human body needs for its preservation many other bodies by which it is. in that way knows how to be in a state in common with the state and arrangement of all circles or external bodies moving in a circle. as it were. the more numerous and varied the means it has ‘to move and arrange external bodies’. I thus also possess a quite exact awareness (adequate idea) of the shape of the external body. Thus the body. continually regenerated’. and its aptitude increases in proportion to the number of ways in which its body can be disposed.
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.’ In other words. Therefore ‘the human mind is adapted to the perception of many things. the more it has ‘in common’ with other bodies. it is in the activity of the human body in the shape of another external body that Spinoza saw the key to the solution of the whole problem. and since it ‘can move and arrange external bodies in many ways’. In possessing consciousness of my own state (actions along the shape of some contour or other). knowing how to be in a state of movement along the contours of circle.

is here. as a difference in their mode of existence (‘action’). which are not at all like that
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. It is interpreted as a difference within one and the same world (the world of bodies). its actions. interpreted not as a barrier separating us from the world of things. using the language normal to his contemporaries). or simply in the conscious states of my body. The ‘specific structure’ of the human body and bra n. as he interpreted the term ‘mind’ on neighbouring pages. for the first time. and not in conformity with the structure and arrangement of my own body and its ‘parts’. and the states of my body. The more of these actions I know how to perform. and the more adequate are the ideas included in the ‘mind’ (as Spinoza continued to express it. however. i. in accordance with the shape of the external body.That. the more perfect is my thinking. only happens where and when I actively determine myself.e. Descartes’ dualism between the world of external objects and the inner states of the human body thus disappeared right at the very start of the explanation.

the more things will the mind be adapted to perceive.. ..’ In no case can these ‘common ideas’ be interpreted as specific forms of the human body. for .. and to possess forms in common with them.body.’ Hence. that is to say. all bodies agree in some things. and they are only taken for the forms of external bodies by mistake (as happened
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. clearly and distinctly. Spinoza himself expressed it thus: ‘There will exist in the human mind an adequate idea of that which is common and proper to the human body. ‘Hence it follows that the more things the body has in common with other bodies. but on the contrary as the same property of universality that enables the thinking body (in contrast to all others) to be in the very same states as things. which . perceived by all. and to any external bodies by which the human body is generally affected of that which is equally in the part of each of these external bodies and in the whole is common and proper. also it follows that ‘some ideas or notions exist which are common to all men. must be adequately.

e. and the less there is of the ‘specific
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. being the actions of the body in the world of bodies. the general universal nature of things. From all that it follows that ‘the more we understand individual objects. ‘he who possesses a body fit for many things possesses a mind of which the greater part is external’.with the Cartesians and later with Berkeley). ‘in corporeal’. unless through the ideas of the affections of its body’ The fact is that the ‘affections of one’s body’ are quite objective. Therefore.’ i. world substance. the greater is the extent to which the power of our thinking is increased. the more individual things our activity embraces and the deeper and more comprehensively we determine our body to act along the shape of the external bodies themselves. despite the fact that ‘the human mind perceives no external body as actually existing. and not the results of the action of bodies on something unlike them. and the more we become an active component in the endless chain of the causal relations of the natural whole. the more we understand God.

This functional determination gives an exact orientation to structural analysis of the brain. the more universal it is.) affect ideas. and gives a criterion by which we can distinguish the structures through which thinking is carried on within the brain from those that are completely unrelated to
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. sense organs. the more the constitution and arrangement of the organs within it (brain. but by the external conditions of universally human activity in the world of other bodies. And the more passive it is. The more active our body is. etc.constitution’ of our body and brain mixed into the ‘ideas’ making them ‘vague and inadequate’ (ideas of the imagination and not of ‘intellect’). the less it introduces ‘from itself’. and the more purely it discloses the real nature of things. Therefore the real composition of psychic activity (including the logical component of thought) is not in the least determined by the structure and arrangement of the parts of the human body and brain. fixes the general goal. nervous system.

the process of thought. work out for doctors and anatomists and physiologists the functional determination of thinking and not its structural determination. circulation of the blood. But you can find the functional determination of thought only if you do not probe into the thinking body (the brain). and so on. and not resort to vague ideas about an ‘incorporeal mind’. but leave investigation of what goes on inside the thinking body to doctors. That is why Spinoza reacted very ironically to all contemporaneous ‘morphological’ hypotheses. anatomists. and so on. do not build speculative hypotheses about the structure of the body of the brain. and you must do it strictly and precisely. not only can. and in particular to that of the special role of the ‘pineal gland’ as primarily the organ of the ‘mind’. but govern. On this he said straight out: since you are philosophers. and physiologists. You. say. but are bound to. digestion. as philosophers. but carefully examine the real composition of its objective activities among the other bodies of the
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. ‘God’.

e. is not enough.infinitely varied universum Within the skull you will not find anything to which a functional definition of thought could be applied. The sole ‘body’ that thinks from the necessity built into its special ‘nature’ (i. Of necessity. the ‘inorganic body of man’. and all the anatomical features peculiar to him. ThinkinAsignecessarv premise and indispensable sqndition (sine qua non) in all nature as a whole. only nature of necessity thinks.e. because thinking is a function of external. into its specific structure) is not the individual brain at all. Marx affirmed. according to Spinoza. and not even the whole man with a brain.
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. the world of the ‘things’ that he produces and reproduces by his activity. only substance possesses thought. objective activity. heart. and hands. the ‘anatomy and physiology’ of the world of his culture. i. And you must therefore investigate not the anatomy and physiology of the brain but the ‘anatomy and physiology’ of the ‘body’ whose active function in fact is thought. But that. Aecording to him.

nature changing and knowing itself in the person of man or of some other creature like him in this respect. Substance.
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. A body of smaller scale and less ‘structural complexity’ will not think. the universal matter of nature. is also its substance.nature that has achieved the stage of man socially producing his own life. both that outside him and his own. having become the subject of all its changes in man. Labour is the process of changing nature by the action of social man. universally altering nature. the cause of itself (causa sui). But nature. and is the subject’ to which thought belongs as ‘predicate’.

to the process of spiritual maturing. The ‘matter of logic’ then underwent. Schelling. and Lenin. in a very short historical period. and Hegel. Engels. as we have already said. First of all we must note that it was German classical philosophy that clearly recognised and sharply expressed the fact that all problems of philosophy as a special science
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. made wise by experience. marked in itself by an inner dialectic so tense that even simple acquaintance with it still cultivates dialectical thinking. associated with the names of Kant. materialist rethinking of the achievements that humanity owes in the realm of the Higher Logic to classical German philosophy of the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. repetition of the work of Marx. the most prodigious ‘flight of imagination’ since antiquity. or critical. is ‘repetition of the past’. Fichte.3: Kant — Logic and Dialectics The most direct path to the creation of dialectical logic. striking in its rapidity.

Spinoza and Leibniz. but mainly by the powerful pressure of outside circumstances. by the striving to completeness and orderliness (although the philosophers themselves so expressed it). entered on a fundamentally new stage of understanding and resolving of its special problems.
Understanding of this fact.somehow or other turned on the question of what thought was with and the what were its interrelations external world. completing in Kant a more than two-century cycle of investigation.
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. the crisis-ridden. Philosophy. The need to examine and analyse the path critically was not of course dictated only by the inner needs of philosophy itself. was now transformed into the consciously established jumping-off point of all investigations. into the basic principle of a critical rethinking of the results of the preceding development. already matured earlier in the systems of Descartes and Locke. prerevolutionary state of all intellectual culture. The intense conflict of ideas in all spheres of intellectual life.

In
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. In trying. to find and point out to people the rational way out of the situation that had arisen. to understand where the general cause of the mutual hostility between people and ideas was hidden. The actual state of affairs in science presented itself to Kant as a war of all against all. against his will. willy-nilly involved in ideological struggle. more and more insistently impelled philosophy to dig down ultimately to the very roots and sources of what was happening. exposed more clearly the essence of the problems which were unresolvable by the tried and known methods of philosophy. to unite and reconcile those principles within one system he only.from politics to natural science. Kant was the first to attempt to embrace within the framework of a single conception all the main opposing principles of the thought of the time which was approaching a catastrophic collision. following Hobbes. he characterised (as applied to science) as ‘a state of injustice and violence’. in the image of that ‘natural’ state which.

overcome the anguish of dissension?
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. and antagonisms arising in science. In that case ‘the disputes are ended by a victory to which both sides lay claim. The ‘natural’. that constituted the ‘natural’ state of human thought for Kant.this
state
scientific
thought
(‘reason’)
‘can
establish and secure its assertions only through war. was just dialectics. consequently. from science understood as a certain developing whole. arranged by some mediating authority. and obvious state of thought.’ [Critique of Pure Reason] Putting it another way. but only ultimately to find a corresponding ‘rational’ means of resolving the contradictions.. discussions. each of which had been developed into a system claiming universal significance and recognition.e. disputes. without the aid of ‘authority’... i. actual. it was the tension of the struggle between opposing principles. Kant was not at all concerned to extirpate it once and for all from the life of reason..’. Could reason itself. conflicts. and which is generally followed by a merely temporary armistice..

or ‘constitution of reason’.‘The endless disputes of a merely dogmatic reason. in the form of a ‘legal process’ or ‘action’ in which each party would hold to one and the same ‘code’ of logical substantiation and. and in a legislation based upon such criticism.’ The state of endless disputes. systematically developed ‘legislation’ recognised by all. academic discussion. and hostility between theoreticians. which would enable it to seek solution of the conflicts not in war ‘to the death’ but in the sphere of polite. would remain not only critical but also self-critical. This ideal of the inter-relations of theoreticians and it is difficult to raise any
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.’ as he put it. seemed to Kant to be a consequence of the fact that the ‘republic of scholars’ did not as yet have a single. ‘thus finally constrain us to seek relief in some critique of reason itself. recognising the opponent as an equally competent and equally responsible party as himself. always ready to recognise his mistakes and transgressions against the logical rules.

[Lectures on the History of Philosophy] And only the profound reform that it underwent in the work of the classical German philosophers restored respect and dignity to the very name of the science of thought. there was above all that field which tradition assigned to the competence of logic. at the centre of his attention. It was quite obvious to Kant. on the other hand. . .objection against it even now loomed before Kant as the goal of all his investigations. was just as much honoured as it is despised now’. For the first time he compared its traditional baggage with the real processes of thinking in
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. or serve as a tool to analyse it. Kant was the very first to try to pose and resolve the problem of logic specifically by way of a critical analysis of its content and historical fate. that logic in the form in which it existed could not in any way satisfy the pressing needs of the situation created. But thereby. The very term ‘logic’ was so discredited by then that Hegel was fully justified in speaking of the universal and complete scorn for this science that for ‘hundreds and thousands of years .

the propositions that no one had called in question. Having singled this ‘residue’ out from logic. In other words he tried to bring out those ‘invariants’ that had remained unaffected during all the discussions on the nature of thinking stretching over centuries and millennia. neither Newton nor Huygens. Kant was satisfied that what remained was not very much. Kant above all set himself the goal of bringing out and summing up the undisputed truths which had been formulated within the framework of traditional logic. From the angle from which Kant surveyed the history of logic it was impossible to draw any other conclusion. for it went without saying that if one sought only those propositions in logic
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. neither Descartes nor Berkeley. not one theoretically thinking individual. a few quite general propositions formulated in fact by Aristotle and his commentators. though also scorned for their banality.natural science and in the sphere of social problems. neither Spinoza nor Leibniz.

however. both the rationalistnaturalist and the theologian. For all theoreticians had hitherto thought (or had only tried to think) in accordance with a number of rules. Kant. both Spinoza and Berkeley.e. into a universal and necessary one) about the subject matter of logic in general. transformed the purely empirical generalisation into a theoretical judgment (i. about the legitimate limits of its subject matter: ‘The
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. then nothing else would remain within the brackets. nothing except those completely general ideas (notions) about thought that seemed indisputable to all people thinking in the defined tradition. There thus existed a purely empirical generalisation. really stating only that not a single one of the theoreticians so far occupying themselves with thought had actually disputed a certain totality of judgments.with which everyone equally agreed. But you could not tell from these judgments whether they were true in themselves. or were really only common and generally accepted illusions. and all their disagreements were taken out of the brackets.

. and whatever hindrances. anthropological.sphere of logic is quite precisely delimited. its sole concern is to give an exhaustive exposition and a strict proof of the formal rules of all thought.’. it may encounter in our minds’. and other considerations. and so on and so forth. psychological. and of its origins and objects or goals. whereby it is justified in abstracting indeed.. independent of how the problem of the ‘external’ conditions within which thinking is performed according to the rules is resolved. independent Here of ‘formal’ thought means quite is how precisely
understood. ‘whether it be a priori or empirical. accidental or natural. whatever be its origin or object. and of metaphysical. it is under obligation to do so from all
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.. its relations to man’s other capacities and to the external world. Having thus drawn the boundaries of logic (‘that logic should have been thus successful is an advantage which it owes entirely to its limitations.e. Kant declared these rules to be absolutely true and universally obligatory for thought in general. i.

’). Its competence proved to be very narrow. and however absurd and foolish they were. the dispute between Leibniz and Hume but also in a dispute between a wise man and a fool. no rules for judgment’. By virtue of the formality mentioned. A self-consistent stupidity must pass freely through the filter of general logic. of distinguishing whether something does or does not stand under a given rule (casus datae legis)’. say. so long as the fool ‘correctly’ set out whatever ideas came into his head from God knew where. Its rules were such that it must logically justify any absurdity so long as the latter was not selfcontradictory.. that is ‘the faculty of subsuming under the rules.objects of knowledge and their differences. and remained absolutely neutral not only in. Kant especially stresses that ‘general logic contains. it of necessity left out of account the differences in the views that clashed in discussion. and can contain... that is. Kant painstakingly investigated its fundamental possibilities. The firmest knowledge of the rules in general (including the rules of general logic) is
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.

a rigorously defined idea) and experience and the facts (their determinations) is a situation about which general logic has no right to say anything. Kant stated in full agreement with Berkeley. Descartes. i.e. as a criterion for testing readymade knowledge. ultimately. because then it is a question already of an act of subsuming facts under the definition of a concept and not of disclosures of the sense that was previously contained in the concept.therefore
no
guarantee
of
their
faultless
application. however unsound these ideas are in themselves. (For
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. in that case. i. general logic cannot serve either as an ‘organon’ (tool.e.e. Since ‘deficiency in judgment is just what is ordinarily called stupidity’. instrument) of real knowledge or even as a ‘canon’ of it. and since ‘for such a failing there is no remedy’. and Leibniz. The contradiction between a concept (i. acts of verbal exposition of ready-made ideas already present in the head. For what then. is it in general needed? Exclusively for checking the correctness of so-called analytical judgments.

and I shall be obliged to say: it is not a swan. If.example. then. then the contradiction between the concept and the fact will already be converted into a contradiction between the determinations of the concept. I recognise it as a swan. I shall be faced with a difficulty.) So that every time the question arises of whether or not to subsume a given fact under a given concept. the appearance of a contradiction cannot be taken at all as an index of the accuracy or inaccuracy of a judgment. A judgment may
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. One thing is clear. that this bird will not be subsumed under my concept ‘swan’ without contradiction. because the subject of the judgment (swan) will be defined through two mutually exclusive predicates (‘white’ and ‘not white’). and that it must be altered. having seen a bird identical in all respects except colour with my idea of a swan. which general logic cannot help me to resolve in any way. in order to eliminate the contradiction. And that is already inadmissible and equivalent to recognition that my initial concept was incorrectly defined. if I affirm that ‘all swans are white’. all the same.

have a synthetic character. a uniting of determinations. without exception. For in such judgments the initial concept is not simply explained but has new determinations added to it. That is why one cannot apply the criteria of general logic unthinkingly where it is a matter of experimental judgments. of the acts of subsuming facts under the definition of a concept. and not analysis. To put it another way. of acts of concretising an initial concept through the facts of experience. i. A synthesis takes place.e. and reveals its contradictoriness.prove to be true simply because the contradiction in the given case demolishes the initial concept. the breaking down of already existing determinations into details. general logic has no right to make recommendations about the
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. All judgments of experience. The presence of a contradiction in the make-up of such a judgment is consequently a natural and inevitable phenomenon in the process of making a concept more precise in accordance with the facts of experience. and hence its falsity.

g. our statement about swans). Such a statement is indisputable. a judgment of a purely empirical character. Any empirical concept is therefore always in danger of being refuted by experience. and always will.e.
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. is true and correct only with the obligatory reservation: ‘All swans that have so far come within our field of experience are white’.capacity of a judgment since this capacity has the right to subsume under the definition of a concept those facts that directly and immediately contradict that definition. by the first fact that strikes the eye. Consequently. one in which an empirically given. because it does not claim to apply to any individual things of the same kind that we have not yet been able to see. sensuously contemplated thing or object functions as subject (e. And further experience has the right to correct our definitions and to alter the predicates of the statement. Our theoretical knowledge is constantly coming up against such difficulties in fact. i.

despite being drawn from only
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. Every day the farmer brought it corn to peck.But if that is so. But one fine day the farmer appeared not with corn but with a knife. if science develops only through a constant juxtaposition of concepts and facts. and necessity. are such generalisations possible as can. which convincingly proved to the hen that there would have been no harm in having a more exact idea of the path to a scientific generalisation. Does a theoretical from any scientific empirical.) In other words. Once there was a hen in a hen-coop. generalisation (concept). and the hen certainly drew the conclusion that appearance of the farmer was linked with the appearance of corn. claiming universality differ inductive ‘generalisation’? (The complications that arise here were wittily described a century or more later by Bertrand Russell in the form of a fable. through a constant and never ending process of resolving the conflict that arises here again and again then the problem of the theoretical scientific concept is sharply posed immediately.

object
extrapolated with assurance to future experience self-same consideration.e. for example. the effect of the diverse conditions in which it may be observed in future)? Are concepts possible that express not only and not simply more or less chance common attributes. (taking concepts to be into providing about the
prediction. of course. since the definition of the concept ‘circumference of a circle’ contains only
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. in the absence of which the very object of the given concept is absent (impossible and unthinkable). and when there is already another object. which for that very reason is competent neither to confirm nor to refute the definition of the given concept? (As. are such determinations possible. which in another place and another time may not be present. but also the ‘substance’ itself. consideration of a square or a triangle has no bearing on our understanding of the properties of a circle or an ellipse. the law of their existence? That is to say. the very ‘nature’ of the given kind of object.fragmentary experience relative to the given object.. nevertheless scientific claim to be i.

So the Kantian distinction between purely empirical and theoretical scientific generalisations arises. The concept thus presupposes such ‘predicates’ as cannot be eliminated (without eliminating the object of the given concept itself) by any future. and not refutable by that experience. i. Otherwise all science would have no more value than the utterances of the fool in
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. ‘any possible’ (in Kant’s terminology) experience. boundaries that it is impossible to cross without passing into another kind). The determinations of concepts must be characterised by universality and necessity. in any case claim to be universal and necessary (however the metaphysical.such predicates as strictly describe the boundaries of the given kind of figure. psychological. to be confirmable by the experience of everybody of sound mind. or anthropological foundations of such claims are explained). Theoretical scientific judgments and generalisations. must be given in such a way that they cannot be refuted by any future experience.e. unlike purely empirical ones.

too. purely formal.
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. The theoretical generalisations of science (and judgments linking two or more) have to indicate not only the definition of the concept but also the whole fullness of the conditions of its applicability. thoughtlessly uttering statements applicable only on particular occasions as absolutes and universals.e. in any conditions of time and place. and necessity. Can we categorically establish that we have listed the whole series of necessary conditions? Can we be sure that we have included only the really necessary conditions in it? Or have we perhaps included superfluous ones. In fact. true in any other case.the parable who produces sententious statements at every opportune and inopportune moment that are only pertinent and justified in strictly limited circumstances.e. since there is always the chance of a mistake here. In any case it is clear that ‘general’. universality. how many times science has taken the particular for the general. i. and he was right. i. But that is the whole difficulty. not absolutely necessary? Kant remained open on this question.

For that reason we are convinced (and science lends our conviction the character of an apodictic affirmation) that
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. The first is empirical and preserves its full force only in relation to experience already past (in Kant’s parlance it is only true a posteriori). and to any possible experience regarding natural bodies (in Kant’s parlance it is true a priori. the second claims to a greater force. i.e. to distinguish that which has been observed up to now from that which will be observed in the future. For the rules of general logic judgments of the type of ‘all swans are white’ are quite indistinguishable from statements of the type of ‘all bodies are extended’.logic has no right here either to formulate a rule making it possible to distinguish the simply general from the universal. prior to. because the difference in them consists not in the form of the judgment but exclusively in the content and origin of the concept embraced in it. however long our experience goes on for and however broad the field of facts that it embraces. before being tested by experience). to be correct also in relation to the future.

Kant said.however far we travelled in space and however deep we penetrated into matter we would never and nowhere encounter a ‘natural body’ that refuted our conviction. Why? Because there cannot be a body without extension in nature? To answer thus. such remarkable bodies did exist. within our field of experience. i. even in the infinite universe. It may be said that they are such ‘in themselves’. would be impudent. then they would be perceived by us as extended. or to assert it. But ‘for us’ they are precisely such. And if they could. only as extensions and continuities (in the form of time). because then they would not in general be part of our
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. For such is the structure of our organs of perception that they can only perceive things in the form of space. and cannot be otherwise. Kant did not consider it possible to deny that. All we can say is the following: if.e. come within our field of vision. or would not be perceived at all. ‘a body without extension’. in any case. they could never.

all statements linking two or more determinations together) acquire a universal and necessary character and no longer need to be confirmed by experience. chemistry.e.experience. synthetic statements. and therefore would not serve as the basis for scientific statements and propositions. All theoretical propositions as such (i. It is by virtue of this character of theirs that we can be quite confident that two times two are four and not five or six not only on our sinful earth but also on any other planet that the diagonal of a square will be just as incommensurate with its sides. and that the laws discovered by Galileo. Newton. The spatial-temporal determinations of things (the modes of describing them mathematically) are thus rescued from danger of refutation by any possible experience.
would
not
become
objects
of
experience. That is why Kant defined them as a priori. and Kepler will
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. because they are precisely true on condition of that very experience being possible. physics. and other disciplines. for mathematics.

a priori. apart from general logic. ‘When we have reason to consider a judgment necessarily universal . i. we must consider it objective also. and general logic is only competent to judge analytical correctness. predicates of the concept. judgments that we are entitled to appraise as universal.e. but a quality of the object. with the rules of producing theoretical (in Kant’s parlance. are linked together (synthesised) in these propositions. that it expresses not merely a reference of our perception to a subject.. synthetic) judgments. and therefore objective. necessary. having to do only with theoretical applications of the intellect. that is. But if the main problem that science comes up against proves not to be analytical judgments but synthetic ones.be the same in any corner of the Universe as in the part investigated by us. Because only and exclusively universal and necessary definitions (in the sense explained above). For there would be no reason for the judgments of other
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. then we must inevitably conclude that there must be a special logic..

’ True. necessary. hence they must all agree with one another. unlike general logic. and with which they accord. to acts of producing universal.men necessarily agreeing with mine. Hence Kant also drew the conclusion that there must be a logic (or rather a section of logic) that dealt specially with the principles and rules of the theoretical application of thought or the conditions of applying the rules of general logic to the solution of special theoretical problems.e. if it were not the unity of the object to which they all refer. i. but that. it will necessarily look exactly the same (and therefore anybody will be able to test the correctness of our statement) a theoretical judgment must guarantee. outside the experience of all people in general. to ignore the difference between knowledge (ideas) in content and origin. we still do not know anything about the thing in itself. and thus objective judgments. in the experience of all existing and future people organised like ourselves. It could and must serve as an
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. This logic was still not entitled.

in its most general sense. the logic of truth. ‘By synthesis. initial forms of the working of thought.’ he said. ‘I understand the act of putting different representations together and of grasping what is manifold in them in one (act of) knowledge.
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. i. and not ideas already existing in the head clarified. Whereas analysis consisted in act of arranging ready ideas and concepts. and so in general to the original.’ Thus he assigned synthesis the role and ‘sense’ of the fundamental operation of thinking.e. Kant conferred the title of transcendental logic on it. i. And the rules of general logic had a very conditional relation to that act. preceding any analysis in content and in time. The centre of attention here naturally turned out to be the problem of what Kant called the intellect’s synthetic activity.adequate canon (if not as an organon) for thinking that laid claim to the universality and necessity of its conclusions. synthesis served as an act of producing new concepts. the activity by which new knowledge was achieved. and propositions. generalisations.e.

e. schemas. and therefore as regards content no concepts can arise by way of analysis. schemas ensuring unity of diversity. and despite it. logical forms. were not the principles of general logic. means of identifying the different and uniting the heterogeneous.’ So the original. not the law of identity and the principle of contradiction). and means of uniting various ideas into the body of some new idea. the representations must themselves be given. notwithstanding the formal order of his exposition. Thus. but only universal forms. Kant in essence affirmed that the really universal initial and fundamental logical forms were not those at all that were considered such by traditional formal logic.In fact. but that these were rather the ‘second storey’ of logical science. fundamental. Kant said. and true only insofar as they agreed
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. where reason had not previously Joined anything together there was nothing for it to divide and ‘before we analyse our representations. not the fundamental principles of analytical judgments (i. and so derivative. secondary. it far spired.

Thinking therefore is the same as judging. and never into that of logic. Hence judgments are either merely subjective. The union of representations in one consciousness is judgment. Not enough attention is usually paid to this point in expounding Kant’s theory of thought. although it is here that he proved to be the real progenitor of a fundamentally new dialectical stage in the development of logic as a science. with the propositions and judgment.with the more universal and important. It was clearly a complete revolution in views on the subject matter of logic as the science of thought. when representations are referred to a consciousness in one subject relating to the synthesis of determinations in the composition of a concept
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. Kant was the first to begin to see the main logical forms of thinking in categories thus including everything in the subject matter of logic that all preceding tradition had put into the competence of ontology and metaphysics. or referring representations to judgments in general.

‘I have never been able to accept the interpretation which logicians give of judgment in general. that is.only. they declare. and so principles of objectively valid judgments. ‘It is.’ Kant said. the representation of a relation between two concepts. And just because the old logic had turned up its nose at investigating these fundamental logical forms of thinking. The logical functions of all judgments are but various modes of uniting representations in consciousness But if they serve for concepts. necessarily. and united in it. it could neither help the movement of theoretical. when they are united in a consciousness generally. they are concepts of their necessary union in a consciousness. scientific knowledge with advice nor tie up the loose ends in its own theory. I do not here dispute with them as to what is defective in this interpretation that in any case it applies only to categorical not to hypothetical and disjunctive judgments (the two latter containing a relation not of concepts
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. or objective. Categories are also ‘principles of objectively valid judgements’.

e. Categories were thus those universal forms (schemas) of the activity of the subject by means of which coherent experience became possible in general. But the problem was posed: the definitions of categories were understood as logical (i. as we shall see below. True.but of judgments). an oversight from which many troublesome consequences have followed.’ Kant clearly posed the task of understanding categories as logical units.Since experience is knowledge by means of connected perceptions. and of disclosing their logical functions in the process of producing and transforming knowledge. he also displayed an almost uncritical attitude to the definitions of the categories borrowed by logic from ontology. I need only point out that the definition does not determine in what the asserted relation consists.. i. universal judgments..e. by which isolated perceptions were fixed in the form of knowledge: ‘. the categories are and necessary) schemas or the principles of linking ideas together in ‘objective’
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.

Otherwise it simply had no right to call itself the science of thought.conditions of the possibility of experience. Any judgment. At the same time. therefore. Thus it was Kant (and not Hegel. that claimed to universal significance. categories were nothing other than universal forms (schemas) of the cognitive
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. those very concepts the that were of traditionally considered monopoly
metaphysical investigations. And if logic claimed to be the science of thinking it must also develop just this doctrine of categories as a coherent system of categorial determinations of thought. as is often thought and said) who saw the main essence of logic in categorial definitions of knowledge. and began to understand logic primarily as the systematic exposition of categories. always overtly or covertly included a category :’we cannot think an object save through categories. universal and necessary concepts characterising an object in general. and this is linked with the very essence of Kant’s conception. and are therefore valid a priori for all objects of experience.

Aristotle. reproached Aristotle for not having given any ‘deduction’ of his table of categories. though in fact it was not his at all. as the impersonal process of development of science. The Aristotelean list of categories therefore suffered from ‘empiricism’. but simply only setting out and summing up those categories that already functioned in the existing consciousness of his time. purely logical forms of thinking understood not as a psychic act of the individual but a ‘generic’ activity of man. not without grounds. Kant. In addition. as the process of the crystallising out of universal -scientific knowledge in the individual consciousness. not having been content with explaining the logical function
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.activity of the subject. Kant. responsibility had been put for the narrow. considered Aristotle the founder of this understanding of logic. following mediaeval tradition. however. formal understanding of the boundaries and competence of logic. and on Kant’s lips the reproach sounds even more severe. that same Aristotle on whom.

had also ascribed a ‘metaphysical meaning’ to them. in order to correct Aristotle’s mistake. as a universal theory of objectivity as such. as the ‘father of logic’ and understood that Aristotle was such in his capacity as author of the Metaphysics. So Kant once and for all cut the roots of the mediaeval interpretation both of Aristotle and of logic. universal determinations of the world of things in themselves. into ontology. and so having converted logic into metaphysics. In other words Kant still saw the real significance of Aristotle.of categories. theoretical cognitive) schemes of the activity of the mind but also as universal forms of existence. through the converting prism of his initial precepts. Kant thus saw Aristotle’s main sin as having taken the forms of thinking for the forms of being or existence. Hence also the task of having. to convert metaphysics into logic.e. that is to say he ‘hypostatised’ the purest logical schemas as metaphysics. which had seen the logical doctrine of the Stagirite only in the texts of
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. explaining them not only as logical (i.

but an easy task. is not only a possible. but was removed and overcome by Kant. Kant did not give his system of categories in the Critique of Pure Reason. with all the requisite explanations.’. its most general categories (quantity. acquired the force of prejudice in the Middle Ages.it will be obvious that a full glossary.the Organon. Kant considered that the further development of the system of logic in the spirit of these principles no longer constituted a special work: ‘.’ ‘. He also did not set out the logic. quality. but only with the principles to be followed in its construction. . with the aid of the ontological
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.. and modality. .It can easily be carried out. each of which was made more concrete in three derivatives). This unnatural separation of logic from metaphysics.. but only posed the task of creating one in general fashion. relation.. but only the most general principles and outlines of its subject matter in its new understanding.. which in fact was due not to Aristotle at all but to the Stoics and Scholastics. ‘since at present we are concerned not with the completeness of the system.

But the very carrying out of the task posed by Kant very quickly led to an understanding that it was not so simple to do. as was the case with general logic. and to the determinations of categories developed in it. the predicables of coming to be. etc. under the category of community the predicables of presence. Kant himself still did not clearly and
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. action. since what was required was not a formal change but a very serious and far reaching. resistance.manuals for instance. In practice it sometimes resulted simply in the renaming of ‘ontological’ concepts as ‘logical’. Kant displayed an absolutely uncritical attitude to the theoretical baggage of the old metaphysics. since he reduced the business of creating the new logic to very uncritical rethinking. change.’ Here again. under the predicaments of modality. passion. ceasing to be. by placing under the category of causality the predicables of force. radical transformation of the whole system of philosophy. to a purely formal transformation of the old metaphysics (ontology) into logic.

In themselves categories were empty.e. had been made. the external world as and how we of necessity thought of it. as and how it was represented in
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. affirming that it was impossible in any case to understand categories as abstract determinations of things in themselves as they existed outside the consciousness of people and outside experience. A start. schemas of the activity of the intellect linking together the facts of sensuous experience (perceptions) in the form of concepts and theoretical (objective) judgments. and any attempt to use them as other than logical forms of the generalisation of empirical facts led one way or the other only to balderdash an(l logomachy. in a universal (abstractuniversal) way only the conceivable object. he had only partially detected the dialectical contradictions of the old metaphysics. They characterised. i.completely realise this fact. however. According to Kant categories were purely logical forms. Kant expressed this idea in his own manner. in the form of the famous four antinomies of pure reason.

whether in the world of the ‘transcendental’ outside the bounds of experience. only the doctrine of thinking. That question Kant thought it impossible to answer. and so on. there was causality. Science was therefore always and everywhere obliged to discover causes and laws. therefore. In the world with which science was concerned there was no need. and only logic. Transcendental logic. to explain and numerically express the degree of probability of any particular event happening. necessity. was logic. but in the world as given to us-by-experience matters stood exactly as logic pictured them. the logic of truth. a difference in the probability and inevitability of an event occurring. Its concepts (categories) told us absolutely nothing about how matters stood in the world outside experience. and science needed nothing more. even as
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. quantitative and qualitative differences. and chance.consciousness after being refracted through the prism of our sense organs and forms of thinking. to differentiate the probable from the absolutely inevitable. and so on and so forth.

geology. celestial mechanics (i. but by no means to solve it. generalising the data of experience by means of the categories of transcendental logic.hypothetically assumed factors.e. ‘incorporeal’ forces. mechanics. taken outside the power of the categories of space and time). emphasised. however. They could not solve it. for ‘unextended’ or ‘eternal’ factors (i. absolutely unalterable ‘substances’. were in a position to tackle the task that the old ontology had monopolised. and not because
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. even though new in principle and clarified by criticism. Only all the existing sciences (and those that might arise in the future) together. and other accessories of the old metaphysics. anthropology. physics. physiology.e. for it was insoluble by the very essence of the matter and not at all because the experience on which such a picture of the world as a whole was built was never complete.. To tackle it Kant. chemistry. but only the whole aggregate of real experimental sciences mathematics. The place of the old ontology must now be taken not by some one science. astronomy).

would discover more and more new fields of facts and correct its own propositions. but with him this quite true thought acquired a rather different form of expression. scientifically substantiated picture of the world even relatively satisfactory for a given moment of time. Why was that so? The answer is in the chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason devoted to analysis of
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. The trouble was that any attempt to construct such a picture inevitably collapsed at the very moment of being made. into an affirmation that it was impossible in general to construct a unified. developing with time. by the shattering forces of dialectics.science. The picture sought would inevitably be self-contradictory. because it was immediately smashed to smithereens by antinomies and immanent contradictions. and was converted into a basic thesis of agnosticism. If Kant had argued like that he would have been absolutely right. thus never achieving absolute finality in its constructions of the world in concepts. which was the equivalent for Kant of its being false.

that of the theoretical synthesis of all the separate ‘experimental’ statements that made up a single theory developed from a single common principle. in the structure of a system of concepts and judgments. were of course
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. It was no longer a matter of schemas of the synthesis of sensuous facts in reason. empirical facts given in living contemplation. a task with which scientific understanding was constantly in collision. but of the unity of reason itself and the products of its activity in the structure of a theory. Now the job already was not to generalise. Another task. but the concepts themselves.e. it turned out.the logical structure of reason as the highest synthetic function of the human intellect. the sensuously contemplated. to unite and link together. Generalising of the factual data by means of a concept. by means of an ‘idea’ or general guiding principle. remained outside the competence of either general or transcendental logic. i. and the generalising of concepts by means of a theory. in order to obtain concepts.

simple piling up of partial generalisations. but is always striving to bring them together. a kind of ‘metalogic of truth’ bringing under its critical control and surveillance not individual acts of rational activity but all reason as a whole: Thinking with a capital ‘T’. And the rules for them must be different. the synthesis of all its
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. and does not wish to be. There is therefore yet another storey in Kant’s logic. It is a legitimate striving. It cannot be satisfied. thinking in its highest synthetic functions and not separate and partial operational schemas of synthesis. and since it is realised in activity and thus appears as a separate power.quite different operations. by simple aggregates. Kant called it reason in distinction from understanding. Reason is the same as understanding. only it is involved in the solving of a special task. to link them together by means of general principles. explanation of the absolute unity in diversity. The striving of thought to create a single. so to say. integral theory is natural and ineradicable.

thought. but in resolving this task. in self-destructing. thinking invades a country where these laws do not operate. where its rules and norms were powerless and without authority. Kant painstakingly showed that this did not happen as a consequence of slovenliness or negligence in any thinking individuals at all. true.schemas and the results of their application in experience. still inevitably lands in a contradiction. The old metaphysics struggled for whole millennia in hopeless contradictions and strife because it stubbornly tried to do its job with unsuitable tools. Naturally it also operates there according to the rules of logic. Kant set himself the task of discovering and formulating the special ‘rules’ that would subordinate the power of thinking (which proved in fact to be its incapacity) to organise all the
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. though exactly observing all the rules and norms of logic (both general and transcendental) without exception. In entering the field of reason. but precisely because the individuals were absolutely guided by the requirements of logic.

up to the completely unconditioned’. and so of the conditions within which these determinations are unreservedly true is exactly equivalent to a claim to understand things in themselves. theoretical schema.separate
generalisations
and
judgments
of
experience into a unity. ‘endeavours to carry out the synthetic unity.e. if I risk asserting that subject A is determined by
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. which is thought in the category.e. In this function thinking strives for a full explanation of all the conditions in which be each partial justified only generalisation without then of understanding (each concept and judgment) can considered For further a reservations. In fact. i. from contradiction with other. existing unconditional synthesis
determinations of a concept. into the structure of an integral. would
generalisation be fully insured against refutation by new experience. as the highest synthetic function of the intellect. The claim to absolutely of the complete. to establish the legislation of reason. just as correct generalisations. Reason. i.

schemas of generalisation. This illegitimate demarche of thinking Kant called transcendental
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. that is to say.predicate B in its absolute totality. and not just in part that existed or might exist in our field of experience. since no experience is unconditioned’. I remove the very limitation from my assertion (statement) that transcendental logic has established for all experimental judgments. including the conditions imposed by experience. But all the conditions cannot be removed. ‘for the conception of the absolute totality of conditions is not applicable in any experience. and so on. and defines A as an object existing in itself. I am no longer stating that it is true only in conditions imposed by our own forms of experience. That means to remove all the limitations governing it from the generalisation. I begin to think that the statement ascribing predicate B to subject A is already true not only within the conditions of experience but outside them. that it relates to A not only as the object of any possible experience but also irrespective of that experience. our modes of perception.

A logical contradiction arises within reason itself. judgments. Understanding falls into a state of logical contradiction (antinomy) here not only because. i.e. and theorising). experience is always unfinished. A logical contradiction is also an index for thought indicating that it has taken on the solution of a problem that is in general beyond its strength.application of reason. and not because a generalisation justified for experience as a whole
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. A contradiction reminds thought that it is impossible to grasp the ungraspable (boundless) . disrupting it. and even not so much because. breaking up the very form of thinking in general. the attempt to affirm that things in themselves are such as they appear in scientific thinking. that the properties and predicates we attribute to them as objects of any possible experience also belong to them when they exist in themselves and are not converted into objects Such a of somebody’s experience of and (perceptions. transcendental entails application understanding contradictions
antinomies.

i. it is immediately discovered that the experience already past was itself internally antinomic if it of course was taken as a whole and not some arbitrarily limited aspect or fragment of it in which. there were pairs of mutually opposing categories.has been drawn on the basis of partial experience. The matter here is quite different. as transcendental logic showed.e. otherwise no science would be possible. That is just what reason can and must do. in trying fully to synthesise all the theoretical concepts and judgments drawn from past experience. there is not only a category of identity orienting the intellect to discovering the same invariant determinations in
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. In the sphere of understanding. For example. schemas of the action of thinking having diametrically opposite directions. contradiction may be avoided. And the past experience is already antinomic because it includes generalisations and judgments synthesised according to schemas of categories that are not only different but are directly opposite. it goes without saying.

but also its polar category of difference. In addition to the concept of necessity there is the concept of chance. ignores the difference between them. pointing to exactly the opposite operation. or is nonidentity. for example. opposite to it and not unitable with it without breaking the principle of contradiction. And any phenomenon given in experience can always be comprehended by means both of one and of another categorial schema directly opposite to it. while cause is not effect (is noneffect). difference is not identity. to the discovery of differences and variants in objects seemingly identical.various objects. but that only means that a higher category embracing both of them is itself subordinated to the law of identity. I look on some fact as an effect. For clearly. True. and so on. because behind each fact is the whole
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.e. i. Each category has another. If. my search is directed to an infinite number of phenomena and circumstances preceding the given fact. both cause and effect are subsumed purely formally under one and the same category of interaction.

two mutually exclusive points of view can be expressed. If. two conceptions developed. however. and therefore two theories. two paths of investigating one and the same fact. and the causal explanation will go further and further away from the search for effects. each of which is created in absolute agreement with all the requirements of logic and with all the facts (data of experience) relating to the matter.history of the Universe. on the contrary. never coinciding with one another. or rather precisely because of this. I shall be forced to go into the chain of phenomena and facts following it in time. and two diverging paths of investigation outlined. I wish to understand a given fact as a cause. Consequently. Here are two mutually incompatible lines of search. but which nevertheless. And they will never converge because time is infinite at both ends. relative to any thing or object in the Universe. and to go further and further away from it in time with no hope of encountering it again anywhere. cannot be linked
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.

and whose sphere of applicability within the framework of experience is not limited to anything. for example.together within one theory without preserving and without reproducing this same logical contradiction within it. It. proclaimed chance or fortuity a purely subjective concept. That is what the old metaphysics did. The antinomies could be eliminated in one way only. recognising one category in each pair as legitimate and correct. to be correct in relation to all experience as a whole. The tragedy of understanding is that it itself. is as wide as experience itself. of course) mutually opposite theories inevitably must always arise and develop. is immanently contradictory. now. In relation to any object. containing categories each one of which is as legitimate as the other. therefore. a
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. two (at least. and henceforth. before. and banning the other from use in the arsenal of science. i. forevermore. taken as a whole. by discarding from logic exactly half of its categorial schemas of synthesis. each of which advances a fully logical claim to be universal.e.

and so converted necessity into the sole objective categorial schema of a judgment. Here. pre-Kantian internal metaphysics. however minute and ridiculous. since each of them denied the objective principle contrary to it. and which to discard and declare a ‘subjective illusion’. in fact.
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. characteristic of the old. It was decided by pure arbitrariness. but at the same time the question arises of which category in the polar pair to prefer and keep. Kant showed. It was. there was not. Both metaphysical systems were therefore equally correct (both the one and the other went equally with the universal principle) and equally subjective. any objective basis for choosing.characteristic of our ignorance of the causes of phenomena. delivering itself from
contradictions simply by ignoring half of all the legitimate categories of thought. That is why Hegel somewhat later called this method of thinking metaphysical. half of the schemas of judgments with objective significance. which led to recognition of the fatal inevitability of any fact. and could not be. by individual preference.

to ascribe the determinations of the opposing category to it. which Kant formulated thus: ‘.. if I determine a thing in itself through a category.’ So... if categories were regarded as the universal predicates necessarily inherent in some subject.. without breaking the principle. considered as the predicates of one and the same subject of a judgment. Kant’s conclusion was this: quite rigorous analysis of any theory claiming to be an unconditionally full synthesis of all determinations (all the predicates of one and the same thing in itself.. then this subject must be the thing in itself. The job was impracticable in principle because. prove to contradict one another and to create a paradoxical situation. And then the statement fell under the principle of contradiction. but the categories. claiming the unconditional
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. I still have no right.No predicate contradictory of a thing can belong to it.The old metaphysics strove to organise the sphere of reason directly on the basis of the law of identity and of the principle of contradiction in determinations.

The age-old theoretical opponents should therefore. they are equally untrue. in relation to the thing-in-itself. They should understand that. will always strive for an unconditionally full synthesis as the highest ideal of scientific knowledge.correctness of its own judgments. instead of waging endless war to the death. and so given a full list of the conditions of the truthfulness of its concept. possesses only part of the truth.e.
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. since he does not violate the principle of contradiction. clarified by criticism. conscious of its legitimate rights and not claiming any sphere of the transcendental banned to it. Understanding. come to some kind of peaceful co-existence between them. will always discover more or less artfully disguised antinomies in the theory. to a relatively true synthesis. but will never permit itself to assert that-it has already achieved such a synthesis. that each of them. recognising the equal rights of each other to relative truth. that it has finally determined the thing-in-itself through a full series of its universal and necessary predicates. i.

man and machine. One theory is taken up with the identical characteristics of a certain range of phenomena. relation without between them into an antinomic relation between concepts one disrupting the deductive analytical schema of its concepts. they are both right in the sense that understanding as a whole (i. say. but partial interest of reason.
Conversely. discloses an objective picture of the thing as it exists outside of and prior to consciousness. reason) always has not only different interests within it but also opposing ones. taken separately. and therefore neither the one nor the other. and independently of each of these interests.
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. plant and animal). Each of the theories realises in full the legitimate. of man and animal.leaving
the
other
part
to
his
opponent.e. and the other with their differences (the scientific determinations. equally legitimate and of equal standing. And it is impossible to unite these theories into one without the converting within the antinomic theory.

through a struggle of opposing principles and interests. since prescriptions were formulated in it capable of of one’s own judgments more rigorously and more clearly. Thus the ‘critique of reason’ and its inevitable dialectic were converted by Kant into the most important branch of logic. and that the legitimate striving to apply its principle rigorously in investigating the facts will not be converted into paranoiac stubbornness. and so on and so
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. that is impossible and impracticable because knowledge as a whole is always obtained through polemic. recipes for eliminating dialectics from knowledge. into dogmatic blindness preventing the rational kernel in the theoretical opponent’s statements from being seen. of course. and helps stipulate the conditions for the correctness forth. Criticism of the opponent then becomes a means of perfecting one’s own theory.What should ‘critique of reason’ give to scientific understanding? Not. It is therefore necessary that the warring parties in science will be fully self-critical.

of the processing of the facts of experience and the facts of contemplation and representation. and to be called. dialectics was also introduced into the structure of logic.e. as the most important branch crowning the whole. In addition. this science acquired the right for the first time to be. and after the comprehension of the constructive and regulative role and function of ideas in the movement of knowledge. After this broadening of the subject matter of logic. scepticism. the science of the universal and necessary forms and patterns of real thought. the science of thinking. thinking that knew and observed the rules of general and transcendental logic and did not suspect the treacherous pitfalls and traps of dialectics). that same
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. after the inclusion in it both of the categorial schemas of thinking and principles of constructing theories (synthesis of all concepts). and also from the natural complement of this dogmatism.rescuing thought from the bigoted dogmatism into which understanding inevitably fell when it was left to its own devices (i.

since Kant himself considered the dialectical form of thought a symptom of the futility of scientists’ striving to understand (i. either a ‘mistake’. of its seeming arbitrariness and showed its absolute necessity for theoretical thinking. to express in a rigorous system of
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.e.dialectics that had seemed. characteristic precisely of thinking concerned with solving the highest synthetic problems and with constructing a theory claiming universal significance. only a sick state of the intellect. as Hegel put it. before Kant. the problem of contradiction (the dialectics of determinations of the concept) proved to be the central problem of logic as a science. and so objectivity (in Kant’s sense). Kant thus weaned dialectics. At the same time. or the result of the casuistic unscrupulousness and incorrectness of individual persons in the handling of concepts. Kant’s analysis showed that dialectics was a necessary form of intellectual activity. Since it was the supreme synthetic tasks that were pushed to the foreground in the science of that period.

because they would both find themselves ultimately in the grip of subjective interests. however. no path for resolving conflicts of ideas. to hold to their truth but to respect the truth of the other man. The fact is that at that time the development of science was generating ever tenser conflicts between its theories. The Kantian ‘dialectic’ did not in fact indicate any way out. outside the consciousness of man. and counselled ideological opponents everywhere to seek some form or other of compromise according to the rule of live and let live. ideas. and conceptions.scientific concepts) the position of things outside their own Ego. In spite of this good advice. and because objective truth common for all was equally inaccessible to both of them. and orthodoxy became more and more frantic in all spheres as the
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. It simply stated in general form that conflict of ideas was the natural state of science. not one of the really militant theories of the time wanted to be reconciled with such a pessimistic conclusion and counsel. the problem also rapidly acquired ideological significance.

This change of mood was also reflected in logic in the form of a critical attitude to the inconsistency. on the grounds that they led directly to a need once more to create that very unified metaphysic that Kant had declared impossible and doomed to
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. through it the ‘monistic’ strivings of the times to create a single theory. These moods were expressed most clearly of all in the philosophy of Fichte. Fichte— The Structural Principle of Logic Dualism or Monism Kant did not accept the improvements that Fichte suggested for his theory of thought.revolutionary storm drew nearer. in fact. When. a single sense of law. reticence. a single system of all the main concepts on life and the world. and ambiguity of the Kantian solution. also burst into the sphere of logic. 4: Part I. it broke. into the sphere of understanding of the universal forms and patterns of developing thought. Kant’s solution ceased to satisfy either the orthodox or the revolutionaries.

’ This single system should still. perhaps transcendental (in the Kantian sense). in spite of Kant’s advice. defeat any other not agreeing with it. there loomed the image of a certain. Before Fichte. but a true theory appertaining to the most important things in the world should still be the one and only theory: ‘The author of this system. that as there there is is only only one one single single
mathematics. For that it would have to be ‘more rational’ in every respect. in fact. in other words would have to explain and interpret the other system and so become broader than it.death from internal contradictions. no new one will arise. and that everything that hitherto had been called philosophy will be counted as an attempt and preparation. is convinced philosophy.
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. for his part. and that as soon as this one possible philosophy had been founded and recognised. Dialectics was dialectics. but still single and uncontradictory system of concepts providing the main principles of life for humanity.

i. i. let it equally say nothing about the world in itself. partial and derivative. Let the single world conception be transcendental as before. was only a temporary. The dialectic that Kant recognised on the scale of all scientific knowledge developing through discussion Fichte therefore wished to incorporate into a single scientific system that would include the principle opposing it. single world conception (Weltanschauung). and in that sense absolutely objective. but for all normally thinking people it should be one and the same. principle. necessarily universal. transitional state of spiritual culture that had to be overcome and resolved in a united. interpret it in a certain fashion. theories. and convert it into its own.For Fichte the position that Kant pictured as eternally insuperable.e.e. the existence of two equally true. The dualism that Kant affirmed as a quality of the eternally insuperable state of spiritual culture seemed to revolutionaryminded Fichte only a manifestation of the timidity and inconsistency of thought in realising
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. and at the same time equally untrue.

In fact. for all that. then not everything in it was in order. it did. the principle of contradiction in determinations. Whether the famous ‘thing-in-itself’ existed was not the question here. This concept was thus inconsistent in a logically developed system-theory. Already. Logic could not justify two mutually exclusive systems at once and if. in this concept.its own principles. and not in the categorial predicates that might be ascribed to things. there was a flagrant contradiction: the supreme fundamental principle of all analytical statements was violated. Fichte was
162
. in the concept of the ‘thing-in-itself’. for. Fichte sought and found the fundamental inconsistency in the Kantian doctrine on thought in the initial concept that Kant consciously proposed as the basis of all his constructions. in the concept of a thing as it exists before and outside any possible experience’ there was included a bit of nonsense not noted by Kant: to say that the Ego was conscious of a thing outside consciousness was the same as to say that there was money in one’s pocket outside one’s pocket.

It was therefore also impossible to build a system of concepts on this foundation because the flaw of contradiction ran right through the very foundation of Kant’s theoretical construction. obliged to follow the same principles that it affirmed as absolutely universal for any correct thinking. or was it rather to be likened to a wilful princeling who dictated laws
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. He reproached Kant with having set a bad example of juggling with the rules of logic itself in the course of substantiating his own system of logic.convinced
that
its
concept
was
logically
impossible. Was logic itself. as a science. meant to violate the supreme fundamental principle of all analytical statements in the very course of their substantiation. or was it entitled to ignore them? Should logic be a science among other sciences. Fichte posed the problem as follows. of course). Fichte’s conclusion was irreproachable: to think a thing-in-itself meant to think the unthinkable (from the standpoint of the principle of contradiction.

But surely.e. according to Kant. of the subject. All the fundamental categories of logic proved to be concepts that denoted not only different but diametrically opposite objects of thought.e. it would seem.
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. But in that case the very concept of thinking. i. in constant polemic with each other. within reason itself. furthermore. and. was made contradictory within itself.obligatory for all other people but not binding in himself? The question. was made senseless from the very beginning. it was right after all that man thought of things given in contemplation (i. It was not surprising that contradictions and the flaws of antinomies appeared between understanding and reason. in every thinking individual. One of them contemplated the world and the other thought. I. So we got the position that there were two different Is in every person. was purely rhetorical. in the field of all special sciences) by one set of rules (those of the logic of truth) and about the things given in thought by another set (in the spirit of transcendental dialectics).

if one followed Kant. It was impossible. And for that reason. In general Kant was also inclined to that idea.Correspondingly. the subject of thinking.e. although they merged into one in direct experience and in real life.e. But then there was no thought in general as one and the same capacity in different applications. i. self-destroying. the system proved contradictory through and through. to observe the very rules that it prescribed as universal and necessary for all other sciences. yet nevertheless called by one and the same name. it was suggested. the contemplated and the thought of. that the I itself. was also a ‘thing-in-itself’.
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. when one tried to create a system of all the determinations of this I. it was quite impossible to construct a logic as a science. but two different subjects. two different Is (each of which had to be considered without connection with the other) as two fundamentally heterogeneous objects. As a result. in constructing it. a logic as a system of the logical parameters of thinking. there were two different worlds. i.

must provide a model and example of observation of the principles of thought (the
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. logic. So all the propositions of logic (i. unlike Kantian logic. for the thinking of natural scientists. would set out principles that were really significant for any application of thought This science would set out laws and rules equally binding on both thinking about thinking and thinking about things. according to Fichte. all the conclusions drawn from considering thinking about thinking (as a ‘thing-in-itself’ or noumenon) would equally have no relation at all to thinking about things given in contemplation and representation.e. Thinking about thinking. a theory that. the idea of a general scientific doctrine. i. Hence that central idea of Fichte’s philosophy was born. the very idea of logic as a science quite lost sense for.Apart from the fact that this led to a muddle of concepts (Kant himself was forced to call one of the Is phenomenal and the other noumenal). of thinking about thinking) would have no binding force for thinking about things.e. i.e.

From two different. having no connection at all with each other.principles of scientific scholarship) for the other sciences in general. but monism.e. physics.
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. i. and in no other way. or anthropology. integral system. The initial principle of Fichte’s science of science (Wissenschaftslehre) was therefore not the contrast or opposition of things and consciousness. Because. That meant that to determine or define a concept and to determine the object were absolutely identical expressions. For a concept was just as much an object of scientific study as any other object. but the opposition within the I itself. the more so that we only knew any other object scientifically insofar as it was expressed in concepts. dualistically isolated halves. and when directed to concepts. you could not create a single. when there in mathematics. of the object and its concept. not two initial principles but one only. These principles must remain the same both when thinking was directed to phenomena to itself. What was needed was not dualism.

there were two different sciences. was therefore already included in the identity of their subject. What had appeared to Kant as the object or ‘thing-in-itself’ (object of the concept) was in fact the product of the unconscious. A concept was the product of the same activity. since it produced the sensuously contemplated image of the thing by virtue of imagination. The initial identity of concept and object. or rather of the laws by which the sensuously contemplated world was constituted and those by which the world thought about. Fichte also interpreted the object and its concept as two different forms of existence of one and the same I. The Ego initially created a certain product. unreflecting activity of the I.were two different initial principles. and then began to look
168
. the world of concepts. by virtue of imagination. as the result of self-differentiation of the I into itself. which never merged into one. but taking place with consciousness of the course and meaning of the activities themselves. was built. of their origin.

in the form of the not-I. in consciously reproducing that which it had produced earlier unconsciously. of thinking that consciously obeyed the rules) were in fact nothing more nor less than the conscious laws (expressed in logical schemas) of intuitive thinking. in no way mediated. the I. i.e.on it as something distinct from itself. The laws and rules of discursive thinking (i. as the object of the concept. with itself. without giving itself a clear account of what it was doing. creating the world of contemplated images. as before. as in a mirror. The job of thought as such thus consisted in understanding its own activity in creating an image of contemplation and representation.. between the thing-in-itself
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. But in fact the Ego. as the non-Ego or not-I.e. and regarded itself as it were from the side. Fichte showed that the opposition. of the creative activity of the subject. the world as it is given in contemplation. was solely concerned. Only from that angle did the operation of comparing a concept with its object acquire rational sense. as an object located outside itself.

from his point of view. Fichte quite consistently. it
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. In other words. In logic. showed that denying the principle of the identity of an object and its concept as the initial principle of logic and logical thinking meant. That being so. as a logical postulate. which was the concept. then it must apply them to the understanding of thinking itself. the concept and its object were fully synonymous because any other object could only interest logic to the extent that. and to determinations of its specific object or subject matter. in fact. of all sciences. and logic must dissect the concept of concept. as well. the concept was also the object of study.and its concept (dualism) had also led Kant into the fullest dualism both within the concept itself and within the system of concepts. and insofar as. in logic. denying the principle of identity in its general form. if logic as a science considered the principles of identity and contradiction (the latter was nothing but a negative formulation of the law of identity) as an absolutely indispensable condition of the correctness of any thinking.

a classically consistent model (from the logical angle) of a ‘right-wing’ critique of dualism. was Fichte’s criticism of Kant’s attempt to create a logic. Logic had no business in general with such objects. but they were not competent to operate within science.had already been converted into a concept. There was no place in logic. for logic was not concerned with sensuously contemplated or intuited things. It is no accident
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. Beyond those limits began the sphere of super-rational understanding. beyond its competence. irrational intuition. expressed in a concept. faith. And Fichte did not want to have anything to do with them. and could not be. therefore. from the position of subjective idealism. at least within his Wissenschaftslehre.e. and other aptitudes. i. in essence. that is lying beyond its possibilities of expression. as a scientific system of determinations of thought. for such expressions as a ‘thingin-itself’ or ‘the object before its expression in a concept’. Such. for they were transcendental things for it.

. naturally came into conflict with the conceptions of his teacher Kant. discarding the question of the relation of a concept to the external object in a similar way. must have one and the same meaning or sense.. The law of identity (and correspondingly the principle of contradiction) then boils down to this.that all modern Neopositivists repeat Fichte word for word. that one and the same sign must designate one and the same thing. with its principles.I declare science herewith: of that I a
Fichte’s
knowledge
completely untenable system. He. however.e. and replacing it by the question of its relation to the concept (i. Let us.
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. The latter relation is also naturally defined as an identity of ‘sign’ (the term that takes the place of ‘concept’) and of the designatum. which. Because a pure science of knowledge is nothing more nor less than a naked logic. having contemplated building a system of logic and a logical model of the world. of a concept to itself). return to Fichte. To Kant his venture immediately seemed unacceptable: consider ‘.

would ensure the building of a single system of concepts not cracked by the flaws of antinomies.’ Kant from the outset repudiated the attempt to create a metaphysic. must pass into metaphysics.does not achieve the material of understanding but abstracts from the content of the latter as pure logic. One way or the other it was equally impossible. That. not because it must describe the world of things in themselves but only because Fichte wanted to create a logic which when applied. It was quite natural therefore that Kant considered it a groundless reproach that he ‘had not created a system’ but had only posed the task and equipped science with the
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. according to Kant. was unrealisable however the system obtained was interpreted. or whether objectively (materialistically) subjectively
(transcendentally). a system that would synthesise in itself all the most important conclusions and generalisations of science. from which it is a vain task to pick out a real object and therefore one never attempted. when transcendental philosophy is at stake. but which.

moreover. very inconsistent ones. that I wished to philosophy and not the system of the philosophy itself. but was not. in the course of it. therefore.My exposition. Fichte formulated it as follows: ‘. The argument therefore passed to a new plane: what was a system? What were the principles and criteria enabling us to differentiate a system of scientific concepts from a concatenation of judgments each of which might be true of and by itself. transcendental attributing to me the intention.important such provide a a
(though
not
completely ‘The to
and
consistently worked out) principles needed for construction: propaedeutic presumption. proceeds from the most indefinite. which is again determined before the reader’s eyes.’ Fichte began by insisting that Kant’s system of philosophical concepts was not a system but only a concatenation of the opinions and principles needed for constructing such and. as any scientific one must. is incomprehensible to me. all the same. linked with the others? In explaining his concept of ‘system’..
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..

of course. You. of course. which was impossible since they had already negated one another.’ Thus. The finally determined true result obtained from it is only found here in the end. and as such negated each other. be linked to the objects than were originally linked to them. but only propositions unmediated by development that he took over ready-made and vainly tried to link together formally. Therefore there was no system in Kant. Fichte said: ‘The generality that I affirm in no way arises through apprehension of plurality under
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. only seek this result. according to him a system proved to be the result of the removal of contradictions. In counterposing his position to Kant’s.quite other predicates will. through their successive unification. With Fichte the whole arose precisely from bits. and the way that it is found is of no interest to you. and further this exposition will very often pose and develop propositions which it will afterward refute. They remained unmediated outside the system. and in this way advance through antithesis to synthesis.

was brought to light through the particulars from which it was built up. a system.’ The initial generality. as from bits. and in preserving in it only the diverse definitions that were required of necessity in order to construct the whole. after Kant. too. the logic of analysing Kant’s philosophy had immediately concentrated
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. it was now necessary to develop the whole system of particulars systematically. which was differentiated in the course of its own disintegration into a variety of particulars. in purging the system of everything superfluous and fortuitous. single principle. the task could only consist in getting from this whole to the particulars. The whole (the generality) then proved to be a criterion for the selection of particulars. step by step. Then we would get science. but rather through derivation of endless plurality from the unity grasped in a glance. In other words.unity. also had to be established in scientific system before all else. And now. starting from that one. But Kant’s image of the whole. in testing and re-testing them critically.

and express its selfconsciousness through the same categories
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. system of science
universal forms and laws of development of a scientific determinations. be invariant for any particular science. of Fichte proposed calling the new field of investigation of science i. of course. the knowledge’ of the (Wissenschaftslehre). must give itself a clear account of its own activities. These determinations would.e. Science. its logical ‘parameters’. and that meant they must represent of a system of universal object of determinations every possible
scientific study. be it mathematics or physiology. on the problems of the absolute synthesis of concepts and judgments into a theory understood as a single system. celestial mechanics or anthropology. consequently.Fichte’s attention on the problems that had been brought together in the section of the Critique of Pure Reason on transcendental dialectic. They must define any object. There also was to be found the ‘growing thought point’ ‘the of logical science. achieve selfconsciousness.

and it was impossible to premise any logical proposition on it. even the
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. Fichte specially investigated and explained his understanding of the relation between his Wissenschaftslehre and ‘logic’.e. The science of science was in fact a system of determinations outlining any possible object. any other object given in experience. and built up into a system of rational consciousness in general. Therefore. but only the necessary and universal forms (schemas) of the activity of any possible being possessing thought. as he put it.through which it comprehended everything else. i. What used to be called ‘logic’ was only an abstract schema of this universal activity of constructing any possible object in consciousness. abstractly expressed. and the logical forms in turn were the forms realised. the Wissenschaftslehre could not be demonstrated logically. not the empirical consciousness of this or that individual. and at the same time the structure of the subject constructing that object. The latter proved to be only an abstract schema of the same activity as was outlined in the former.

on the contrary. and be transformed into something else (into the object of another concept).e. If. however. any logical thesis and all logic must be deduced from the Wissenschaftslehre. Their analysis became vitally important precisely when thinking came up against certain changes. operations controlled by logical rules and propositions) by no means lacked necessary and natural premises. Here Fichte did not differ with Kant. a thing could lose predicate A without ceasing to be itself. and that one and the same thing could at different moments of time have a certain predicate A. according to Kant. that meant. and then lose it and be not-A. opposing determinations. that the
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. The fact was that theoretical ‘schematising’ (i. which in essence were a uniting of contradictory. who well understood that change ‘presupposes one and the same subject as existing with two opposite determinations’. Thus logic received its significance from the science of knowledge and not the science of knowledge from logic.law of contradiction.

Theory had no right to include in the definitions of a concept those determinations that the passage of time had washed off a thing. But how did matters stand if the object represented in theory (in the form of a theoretical schema constructed according to the rules of logic) began to be understood not as something absolutely unchanging but as something coming into being. constructed according to the rules of logic. from the power of time. The concept (in contrast to the empirically general representation) expressed only the absolutely unaltered characteristics of the thing. if only in consciousness. Theory. All change was a matter of empirical views and not of theory. A concept therefore always came under the protective cover of the principle of contradiction.disappearing predicate did not belong to the concept of the given thing. as with
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. must give a picture of the object withdrawn. Theory was not interested in change that old prejudice also trapped Kant. was not one of its universal and necessary determinations. as it were.

a process whereby there was initially only A. Or was B nevertheless A? Fichte’s conclusion was: choose between these two either the principle of contradiction was absolute (but then no synthesis was possible in general. but later B necessarily arose (which in itself was understandably not A or was not-A). the beginning or the becoming of a thing in consciousness and by virtue of consciousness? What was to be done if logic itself was understood as an abstract schema of the construction of an object in the eyes of a reader. not uniting of different determinations) or there was development and a synthesis of the determinations of concepts (and
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. D. i. E. and then C. as a schema of the consistent enriching of the initial concept with newer and newer predicates.Fichte? How did it stand with the principle of contradiction. if the logical schema had in fact to picture a process of change.e. right down to Z? For even the simple combination of A and B was a combination of A and not-A.

Fichte concluded: ‘From this you see that what is impossible and contradictory in the concept actually happens in the intuition of space. He started from the point that what was impossible to represent in a concept. you came up against a contradiction in a logical expression. contemplation or constantly intuition occurred (in activity in to
construct the image of a thing). but to return to the intuition (Anschauang). by analysing. Fichte followed another. opposing one in order to unite it with the first. if
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. therefore. and if analysis of the act of intuition showed you that you were forced of necessity to pass from one determination to another. Thus. that is to say the combination or synthesis of mutually exclusive determinations. third path. If. the thing was not to hasten to declare that it could not be.they
did
not
conform
to
the
absolute
requirements of the principle of contradiction). the rights of which were higher than those of formal logic. Zeno’s famous paradox and showing that we divide any finite length into infinity.

and that exercise was always called logic. considered
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. of his own constructive activity? Obviously he could. but also thought about his thinking. Could a person become aware of himself. as was shown above. the recorded result. das Selbst) understood as the subject of an activity producing something different from itself. The Ego was initially equal to itself (I= I) and. Fichte also demonstrated this dialectic from the example of the origin of consciousness. the differentiation of the person himself as the thinking being from himself as thought of. as the object of thought. He not only thought.you saw that A was necessarily transformed into not-A. that is to say the product. of the acts of his own consciousness. of the ‘positing’ of the non-Ego (not-l) by the activity of the Ego. the Ego (Ich. you would then be obliged to sacrifice the requirement of the principle of contradiction. The starting point in this case. and converted the very act of thinking into an object. could only be I. Or rather. that principle could not then be regarded as the indisputable measure of truth.

It was a prototype of logical. in the form of logic. All logical rules must therefore be deduced. In other words they had a certain prototype with which
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. a representation of a non-Ego. creative. creating. an object. already contained in itself the necessity of its own transformation into a non-Ego (not-I). The transformation of the I into the not-I occurred. There could not be empty consciousness not filled by anything.as something active. in its activity in constructing images of things. We saw and knew this directly. from self-observation. reflective thinking that discovered a certain law-governed necessity in itself. and before their study. of course. derived by analysis of actual thinking. in order henceforth to follow them consciously (freely) and to submit to them. for consciousness in general was realised only insofar as a representation of something else arose in it. quite independently of study of the rules of logic. It was a matter of natural ‘primary’ thought. and then expressed it in the form of a number of rules. a thing.

by indicating more rigorous conditions for their application. This approach differed radically from Kant’s position. On the contrary.they could be compared and contrasted. according to which all fundamental logical principles and categories had only to be consistent in themselves so that their predicates did not include contradictions. Fichte. But he thereby also limited them. since each succeeding determination negated the preceding one both individually and absolutely. while Fichte required them to be deduced. he wanted to demonstrate the correctness of all the logical schemas known in pre-Kantian and Kantian logic. Kant therefore postulated the laws and categories of logic. establishing that the principle of contradiction was only fully authoritative in relation to one determination. in order to
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.
True. and their universality and necessity demonstrated. like Kant. Fichte tried in that way to deduce the whole system of logical axioms and categories. did not encroach on the actual content of logical forms and laws. and that within a developing system it was constantly being set aside or discarded.

for concretising the initial.
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. for uniting of empirical data. and not includable within one non-contradictory system. as degrees or phases of the production of concepts. In this case it was important to have posed the problem. There is no need here to explain why Fichte did not succeed in his programme of deducing the whole system of logical categories. into a system. and in that way of uniting within one and the same system categories that stood in a relation of direct negation of one another (formal contradiction). still undivided concept into a number of its universal and necessary predicate-definitions. why he did not succeed in turning logic into an exact science.
consistently taken into practice. of deducing its whole content from an investigation of actual thinking. and at analysing the premises that hindered his idea of reforming logic.understand
them
as
the
universal
schemas. and that had seemed to Kant to be antinomically uncombinable. Let us merely note that the ensuing criticism of his conception was directed precisely at explaining the reasons for his failure.

striving for its own systematic presentation. with the problem of the antinomies that inevitably arose in attempts to create such a in system. was also one in itself. Like Kant. with the problem of a system of knowledge. Schelling— The Structural Principle of Logic Dualism or Monism Schelling. from the very start. or rather. The difficulty in a lay exclusively representing logically
systematic way the fact (directly apparent (intuitive) to every thinking being) that the world is one. was split into two in the eyes of reason. too. And each of the halves so formed claimed the role of the sole true absolute and unconditional. occupied himself primarily. refracted through them. But the rules of logic and laws of the activity of the intellect were such that the single world. and that thought. logically systematic representation of the whole world.4: Part II. Schelling saw the way out not on the plane of logically consistent constructing of determinations but in the practical realisation
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.

unlimited activity. It is easy to discern Schelling’s proud principle in these arguments.e. Activity when completed. it must always be ‘open-ended’ in the future such was the concept of activity. i. Such a system simply had to be taken on direct trust and followed unconditionally. unconditional freedom.’ This system could never be completed. embodied! ‘fixed’ in its product. It was impossible to demonstrate anything by formal logic. most acceptable to it. It was activity that was the absolute and unconditional that could never and must never be completed by the creation of a system crystallised once and for all. was already not activity. to work out a system of uncontradictory proofs that could not be counterposed by its opposite.of the system that presented itself to the human mind as most worthy of it. most in accord with its innate strivings. The system that in Schelling the himself chose was ‘My expressed following principle:
vocation in criticism is to strive for unchangeable selfness (Selbstkeit). the absolutely universal in which new
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.

e. And if there were an opposing system that looked upon man as the passive point of application of previously given. This form of criticism. and on ad infnitum. differentiations.. because it confirmed the thesis that the whole edifice of man’s spiritual culture must henceforth be built on a clear and categorically established foundation. the infinite creative principle existing in every human being and freely presuming both itself and the whole world of objects that it saw. and on the understanding that no one result already achieved had the force of an absolute. embraced dogmatism as its own moment. and thought. namely on the understanding that the sole subject of all possible predicates was the Ego. and particulars would ever be arising and accordingly be merged (identified) with what had previously been established. i. the force of dogma. according to Schelling. as a speck of dust in the vortex of elemental world forces. ‘objective’ authority for the Ego. or a toy in the hands of
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. contemplated (intuited). peculiarities.e.differences. externally objective forces. i.

egoistic private interest. that dogmatic system. would have to be combated by the supporter of true criticism until final victory. defended not only its own. Like Fichte. That was where the proof lay that one party. though it had been rigorously proved formally and was not self-contradictory. that the real battle raged that could and must be won. but also an interest coinciding with the universal
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. critical. It was there. It is thereby refutable in practice for us to realise a system in ourselves absolutely opposed to it.God and his representatives on earth.’ Practical activity was the ‘third’ thing on which all mutually contradictory systems came together as on common soil. and not in the abstractions of pure reason. unswervingly following its principle. Schelling stood for a new. ‘enlightened’ dogmatism: ‘Dogmatism such is the result of our common inquiry is irrefutable in theory because it itself has quit the theoretical field to complete its system in practice.

and that determines nothing for the opposing system. in practice. one of them can no longer ignore the other. because for both there can be only one assertion as an absolute assertion that takes no notice of the opposing system. i. ‘Criticism cannot follow dogmatism into the sphere of the Absolute [understood purely theoretically]. after both have encountered one another. the intellectual culture of humanity cannot lie eternally like Buridan’s ass between two equally logical systems of ideas about the most important things in life.tendencies of the universe. but it is impossible to act simultaneously in accordance with two opposing systems of recommendations. now the position must be won by victory. nor can the latter follow it. to live.e. in the purely theoretically logical sphere] they were without any resistance to the position won. We are
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. and whereas before [i.e. ‘Only now. to act. with absolute and unconditional objectivity. Mankind has.’ That is the point that divided Fichte and Schelling from Kant.

and not simply of the right and the chance of waging an eternal academic dispute. Hence the slogan about victory. One of the clashing logical conceptions must still prevail over the other.forced to choose one of them and then to act strictly in the spirit of its principles. Schelling saw the main problem of the theoretical system in synthetic statements and in uniting them: ‘It is these riddles
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. in the theoretical sphere. it is true. rather purely scholastic quality. while Fichte and Schelling transformed it into the starting point of all their meditations. its opposite. Then it was assured of victory. and for that it must be reinforced by arguments no longer of a purely logical. Like Fichte. Kant himself. But with him this theme only broke through as one of the trends of his thinking. but armed with practical (moral and aesthetic) advantages as well. too. demonstrated in his last works that the arguments of practical reason must all the same tip the scales in favour of one system or the other. although on a purely theoretical plane they are absolutely equal.

e. is not-A. to infringe the boundaries established by the principle of contradiction in determinations. refutes it. for. The most comprehensible thing is how we define everything according to the law of identity. Any dogmatism that obstinately insisted on the knowledge already attained and mastered would therefore always reject any new knowledge from the outset on the sole grounds that it contradicted the old.. His chief question is not how there can be analytical statements. it is in any case not A. and revises it. Any elementary act of synthesising determinations in a judgment be it that A is B in fact already requires us to go beyond the law of identity.. And it did in fact
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. i. but how there can be synthetic ones. and the most enigmatic how we can define anything still outside this law.’ That is aptly formulated. It is clearly the logical expression of the fact that any new knowledge infringes the strictly acknowledged limits of the old knowledge.that oppress the critical philosopher. whatever the adjoined statement B.

‘A system of knowledge is necessarily either a trick. or it must embrace reality not through a theoretical ability. Following him Schelling also plunged into analysis of it. according to Schelling.formally contradict it because it was not analytically included in the old and could not be ‘derived’ from it by logical contrivances of any kind. realising one. which was not bound by the strict limitations of the fundamentals of logic. a game of ideas. that a genuine synthesis was not realised by purely theoretical ability that strictly adhered to the rules of logic. not through a perceptive ability but through a productive. That meant.. but through a practical one. not through knowledge but through action. which took him along a rather
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. It must be united with the old knowledge in spite of the fact that it formally contradicted it.’ With Kant this productive ability was called power of imagination (Einbildungskraft). and even had the right to transgress them when it experienced a powerful need to do so.. but by quite another capacity.

following Fichte. For the men of science Schelling retained. declared to be a completely unsatisfactory instrument for understanding and to be justified solely as a canon of the outward systematisation and classification of material obtained by quite other. as a working tool.different road than Fichte’s. the same old logic that he himself. another motif began to be clearly seen in the reformatory strivings of the young Schelling. from the standpoint of a consistently constructed subjective idealism. to a theory of the artistic. means. Whereas Fichte had provided a classical model of criticism of Kant and his logic from the right. illogical and even alogical. aesthetic comprehension of the mysteries of the universe. in tendencies leading him to materialism. onto the rails of an objective idealism that was not only reconciled to the thesis of the real existence of the external world but also built a theory of understanding it.
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. although with Schelling himself this theory proved to be something quite different from logic and tended rather to a kind of aesthetics.

as the revolutionary wave subsided his philosophy folded its wings. in face of the persistent external world meant to bang one’s head against the wall of incomprehension. quite other moods prevailed than those induced by Fichte’s philosophy. and on the strength of its moral fervour. and he could not find a new source of inspiration. Schelling was
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. so too it became clear to Schelling that to insist on one infinite creative power. as had actually happened in the end to Fichte. For Schelling the fervour born of the revolution was only a certain stage that he reached as a sympathiser and even a disciple of Fichte. just as the forces of rude reality forced the most zealous Jacobins to reckon with them. Being closely linked with the circle of Goethe and the romantic writers. The flight of his imagination was also linked with the events and problems of those years. the Ego. All Fichte’s thought had been concentrated on the social and psychic revolution stimulated in minds by the events of 1789-93. but. and where his thinking matured.In the circles in which he moved.

From the very beginning natural science and art constituted the medium that shaped his mind and his aspirations as an inquirer. For Schelling criticism was a synonym for the standpoint that the objective (universal
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.much more interested than Fichte in nature (read: natural science) on the one hand. it is true. which ascribed it to external things. began in the same way as Fichte. but unconsciously. for him. and in the inherited. which ascribed necessity to an external God. Schelling warred with dogmatism (in the idea of which. as an opposition between the images of the external world that a person produced ‘freely’. in obedience to a compelling force of necessity unknown to him. he too treated the opposition between subject and object as an opposition within human consciousness. there were merged both religious orthodoxy. objective) forms of social life on the other hand. Schelling. Like Fichte. to ‘pure objects’). and philosophical materialism. and the images of the same world that he produced not freely. traditional (in the parlance of Kant and Fichte.

space. and time. and although Fichte united them in the concept of activity. the opposition
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. while the other reconstructed it in the spirit of the requirements of the transcendental ideal. but it was not known how and why they were connected together. All the Kantian antinomies had in fact been merged by him in a single antinomy. tried to overcome the dualism of Kant’s conception. in the contradiction between two halves of one and the same Ego. following Fichte. One of them unconsciously created the objective world of images by the laws of causality. that there were two different Egos in every person. in accordance with the requirements of ‘morality’. but with Fichte the dualism had still been preserved and even reproduced in ever sharper form within his conception. as before.and necessary) determinations of the human psyche were initially innate in the psyche itself and discovered in it in the course of its active selfdiscovery. It was presupposed. In that way Schelling.

like a judge who emerged from somewhere unknown and who brought with him the criteria for evaluating and re-evaluating what existed. during its awakening. a common ‘substance’. The human Ego was again converted into a field of endless battle between two originally
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. And as before it remained an open question what was the inner necessary relation between the two halves of the human Ego.e. through the splitting of which the two halves of necessity arose? Fichte did not find the solution. found the existing world in itself. in spite of his concept of activity. i. The ‘better’ I already. as it were. Did they have a common root.was reproduced again within the Ego in the form of two different principles of activity. a common source. the fruits Of the Ego’s past labour. before it awoke in man. The world of necessary ideas was formed within all Egos quite independently of the activity of the ‘better’ I. In turn it (the pure form of practical reason or the ideal) came into the world of necessarily produced ideas. from outside.

’ (as Fichte formulated the essence of the problem). in accordance with itself and one another.. But that again was only attainable in infinity. Gradually.heterogeneous principles. even mutually contradictory. proved unattainable in the existing world. and so that he can agree with himself agreement of all things outside him with his necessary practical concepts of them concepts that determine how they must be..
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. Fichte freed himself from the Kantian form of antinomies but reproduced them all intact in the form of contradictions within the very concept of ‘activity’. ‘Full agreement of man with himself.. incomplete and unconnected. Schelling reached the same conclusion and began to seek a way out along a new path with the young Hegel. The absolute Ego must take the world of existing ideas. The problem was simply transferred to the sphere of the individual psyche and so made completely insoluble. the main outlines of a new conception began to appear. in the course of criticising Fichte.

at least as a passive obstacle to the dictates of ‘duty’ and the ‘ideal’. the interpretation of the whole sensuous empirical world. and to natural science (which underlay Fichteanism). the absolute indifference to everything except pure morality (including the history of humanity and of nature). the powerlessness of the categorical imperative (ideal) in the struggle against the ‘egoistic’. ‘immoral’. 3. 5. 4. the posing of all the concrete burning issues of the day in a subjective. the indifference of real earthly men to the preachers of the higher morality (how light all the means of paradise developed by the Church
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. the feeble appealing to ‘conscience’ and ‘duty’ that stemmed from that. ‘irrational’ motives of man’s behaviour in society.Schelling and Hegel were more and more dissatisfied with the following ‘points’ in the position of Kant and Fichte: 1. 2. which put the philosopher into the pose of a preacher of fine and noble but impracticable phrases and slogans. if not as hostile. psychological form.

to comprehending that it was ultimately necessary to find the ‘common root’ itself of the two halves of human being from which they both stemmed and could be understood. including that of Kant and Fichte). upbringing. between necessary and free activity. etc. between the real and the proper. namely. Only then would the human personality appear before us not as the passive point of application of external forces (be
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. the difference. and government were thrown into the other pan. etc. the young Hegel said. All that led to one thing. having in mind by the ‘scholastic explanations’ any philosophy oriented on morality.and
supported
by
the
fullest
scholastic
explanations were in the scales when the passions and forces of circumstance. between the world of phenomena and the active essence of man. insuperable in principle. example. the whole history of religion from the beginning of the Christian era went to prove that Christianity could only make people good when they were already good. 6..

Like any idea it existed originally only in the form of an hypothesis. and in particular the conception of Kant and Fichte. that somewhere in the depths. they had been merged in one image before being torn apart and separated in dispute. in the spirit of which the whole mass of existing theoretical revised. in the form of a principle not yet realised in detail. had to be critically
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. i. in the initial essence of matter.they nature or God).e. but as something acting independently (das Selbst). not as an object. which had been depicted by Kant and Fichte as originally heterogeneous in essence and origin (in spite of their efforts to link them). From that was born the idea of the philosophy of identity. i. and antinomy. as subject. had something in common after all.e. Schelling’s thesis stated that both forms of the Ego’s activity (the unconscious and the consciously free) had really to be understood material. Originally the young Schelling only affirmed that the two halves of the human being. discussion.

as two branches growing from one and the same trunk. and that it was necessary to discover that trunk first and then trace its growth before it forked. it was not spirit. but it was also not matter. but there was who knows what!’
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. where there is nothing ideal and nothing real. neither idea nor extension. it was not ideal. neither subject nor object. in essence.’ ‘But Herr Schelling has now left the philosophical path and is seeking through an act of mystical intuition to achieve contemplation of the absolute itself. He had said nothing about where exactly this initial identity was to be seen. neither mind nor matter. What then was it? Here. Schelling had not yet affirmed anything more concrete and definite besides that such identity must be and was. His description was. in Heine’s witty comment ‘philosophy ends with Herr Schelling and poetry I mean folly begins. negative. in its essence. it was not consciousness. but it was also not substance. he is seeking to intuit it at its centre. but it was also not real.

in agreement with Fichte. from the path of thinking in rigorously defined determinations. that everything that was impossible in a concept (because of contradiction) became possible in contemplation or intuition. like Kant.Why did Schelling nevertheless turn from the path of philosophy here. to the path of poetry. he thought. the forms of scientism. held it sacred that the law of identity and the principle of contradiction were absolutely unbreakable laws for conceptual thinking. He. to the path of metaphors and a kind of aesthetic intuition? Only because the logic that he knew and recognised did not permit the uniting of opposing contradictory predicates in concepts of one and the same subject. Schelling supposed that all the acts performed consciously by man in accordance with the rules of logic had been quite fully and exactly described in the transcendental philosophy of Kant and Fichte. and that breaking them was tantamount to breaking the laws of thought in general. Here. That part of philosophy seemed to
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.

In all his activity at this stage (which also followed from Kant’s point of view) being subordinated to the conditions of space. wanted them to embrace the fields that had fallen outside Fichte’s field of vision. the forms and modes of unconscious activity were scientifically described precisely
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. time. The fact was that the attempt to investigate the sphere of unconscious activity in more detail led directly to it.in particular natural science. and how it did so. he only wanted to broaden the scope. that is to say the attempt to investigate the mode of vital activity that man had followed before and irrespective of how he began a special reflection. of its principles. The turn to natural science here was not fortuitous.him to have been created once and for all. and causality. In other words. came within the competence of the natural sciences.. converted himself into an object of special investigation. the sphere of action. and began to reflect specifically on what originated within himself. He did not intend to reform it at all.

because the principle of a mechanism was the uniting (consistent synthesis) of ready-made. chemistry. however. the chief thing of all remained uncomprehended. of the organism. and electrical motions were joined together. psychology. But in the life of the organism (of any biological individual) mechanical. physics. After the organism had been broken down into its constituents. physiology. and so on.through the concepts of physics. chemical. the living
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. and had synthesised them. the mode of existence of organic nature. why were they linked together that way and not in some other way? Why in fact was a living organism obtained and not a pile of its components? With a purely mechanical approach the organism proved to be something quite incomprehensible. Nature had concentrated all her secrets and determinations. chemistry. In the living organism. and optics. previously given parts. For unconscious activity was nothing else than life. namely. and the organism could therefore be studied by mechanics.

or not. in any case. the generation of parts (organs) from an originally undifferentiated whole. as such. But the standpoint of transcendental idealism forced him to affirm that. and functioned in relation to them as the purpose they all served. outside of which it simply did not exist. because (and a that goal meant presupposed the whole consciousness
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.organism. on the contrary through the beginning or origin. The problem of understanding organic life was analysed by Kant in his Critique of the Power of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft) as the problem of the purposefulness of the structure and function of the living organism. Here each part could only be understood through its role and function in the whole. nevertheless it was impossible to attribute any goal to the organism in itself. Here the whole preceded its own parts. however. did not originate through the building up of parts into a whole but. although we and our reason could not cognise the organism other than by means of the concept of a goal.

The naturalist must seek in nature itself the causes.e. chemical particles in the living body.of the origin of the organism from inorganic nature. a certain ‘higher principle’ descended from somewhere outside and organised the physical.apparatus of transcendental apperception) and the animal and vegetable did not possess such. The problems of life also proved to be the stumbling block that forced Schelling to stop and critically re-examine certain concepts of the philosophy of transcendental idealism. On those grounds he resolutely rejected vitalism. Like Kant he categorically objected to introducing supernatural causes into the framework of the thinking of the natural science. which is that organisation and life are
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. without implicating any kind of extranatural or supernatural force in it. physics. Schelling affirmed. Life must be fully explained by way of natural science. the idea that. There was no such principle outside consciousness. following Kant. ‘There is an older delusion. the world of mechanics. and chemistry). in inorganic nature (i.

It would be at least one step toward that explanation if one could show that the succession of all organic beings had come about through the gradual evolution of one and the same organisation. consciousness. In any case it was a matter of the capacity involved in nature itself to engender a succession of more and more complex and highly organised living creatures. And in that case we had every grounds and right to ascribe to nature itself.
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. so this unproved statement serves no purpose other than to sap the courage of the investigator... ‘in the form of a goal’. What was that characteristic Schelling did not consider it possible to say. up to and including man.. With it only so much can be said: the first source of organic nature is physically inscrutable. in whom a ‘soul’. if not purpose in the transcendental sense.’ Man and his peculiar organisation stood at the logic apex of the pyramid of living creatures. at least that objective characteristic which is reproduced in our reason (by virtue of its specifically transcendental structure) as a purpose.inexplicable by the principles of Nature.

initially undivided. But then it was necessary to think of nature not as naturalists had so far done (the mathematician plus the physicist. without a goal or purpose. each of them occupying himself with only his own private field and not even trying to link the results of his investigations with those of his neighbour). Schelling also advanced as the main principle by which alone the antinomy between mechanism and organism
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. from the special sciences. plus the anatomist.e. a capacity consciously (freely) to reproduce everything that occurred in nature unconsciously. on the contrary. to understand them as consecutive stages in the development of one and the same whole. i.was awakened and transcendental mechanisms arose. The idea of nature as a whole. We must therefore not build up the picture of the whole like a mosaic. It must be considered as some kind of primordial whole in which the subject matter of the special sciences was differentiated. but must endeavour. quite characteristic of the classical Greeks and of Spinoza. plus the chemist.

could be scientifically resolved (without appeal to supernatural factors). ‘As soon as our investigation ascends to the idea of Nature as an entity the opposition between mechanism and organism disappears immediately, an opposition that has long hampered the progress of natural science and that will long continue to block our enterprise’s success in the eyes of quite a few. .’ Schelling sought the way out by developing the concepts of mechanics and organic life from one and the same truly universal principle, which led him to the idea of representing nature as a whole, as a dynamic process in the course of which each successive stage or phase negated the preceding one, i.e. included a new characteristic. The purely formal (analytical) determination of a higher phase of the process could therefore not be deduced from the determination of a lower one, that was done simply by making a synthesis, by adding on a new determination. It was not surprising that, when the higher phase of a dynamic process was put directly alongside a lower phase of the same

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process,

they

were

thought

to

be

two

simultaneously co-existing ‘objects’ (which is precisely how they look in empirical intuition), and proved to be mutually directly contradictory. The basic task of the philosophy of nature, consequently, consisted just in tracing and showing how, in the course of a dynamic process, determinations arose that were directly opposed to the initial one. In other words, we thought of a dynamic process only as one of the gradual engendering of oppositions, of determinations of one and the same thing, i.e. of nature as a whole, that mutually negated one another. Schelling saw in that the universal law of the natural whole, operating identically in the field of mechanics, and of chemistry, and of electromagnetism, and of organic life. Such was the truly universal (i.e. identical for all the phenomena of nature) law of bifurcation, of the polarisation of the initial state. The attraction and repulsion of masses in mechanics, the north and south poles in magnetism, positive and negative electricity, acids and alkalis in chemical reactions

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such were the examples flooding in on Schelling from all sides, and supplied again and again by the discoveries of Volta and Faraday, Lavoisier and Kielmeyer. The most diverse scientific discoveries were seen as fulfilment of Schelling’s predictions, and his fame grew. His disciples were to be found among doctors, geologists, physicists, and biologists; and that not by chance. Schelling’s philosophy proposed a form of thinking, the need for which was already imminent in the womb of theoretical natural science. Exhilarated by success, Schelling continued to work the lode he had discovered for all it was worth. But the transition of mutual opposites described appeared most marked and unsullied precisely on the boundary where natural and transcendental philosophy met, which was where the Ego arose from the sphere of the unconscious dynamic process (from the non-Ego), i.e. the transcendental, spiritual organisation of man, or, on the contrary, where objective knowledge of the not-I was born from the conscious activity of

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the I. This mutual, reciprocal passage of the determination of the Ego into a determination of the non-Ego demonstrated the action of the universal law of the dynamic process in its purest and most general form, i.e. the act of the transformation of A into not-A, of the bifurcation or splitting into two, of the ‘dualisation’ of the initial, originally undifferentiated state. But how was the initial absolute state, identical in itself, to be thought of, from the polarisation of which there arose the main ‘dualism’ of the natural whole, i.e. the Ego and the non-Ego, the I and the not-I, the freely conscious creativity of the subject and the whole vast sphere of the ‘dead’, congealed, fossilised creative activity, the world of objects? That was where the specifically Schelling philosophising began. It turned out that it was impossible to think of the initial identity, i.e. to express it in the form of a rigorously delimited concept. On being expressed in a concept it immediately came forward as an antinomic bifurcation. Identity was realised in the concept

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(in science) precisely through its absence, through contrasts that had nothing formally in common between them. We have reached a very important point. That Schelling called his system the philosophy of identity was not at all because it represented a system of determinations or definitions common to the I and the not-I. Rather the contrary. Schelling denied the possibility of such a system of concepts in principle. His philosophy was put forward in the form of two formally unjoined systems of concepts, formally opposed in all their determinations yet nevertheless mutually presupposing each other. One was the system of determinations of the Ego as such (transcendental philosophy); the other was the system of assembled universal determinations of the object, of the non-Ego (natural philosophy). The first disclosed and described in the shape of formally non-contradictory constructions the specifically subjective forms of man’s activity that it was impossible to ascribe to nature existing outside of and before human

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consciousness. The second, on the contrary, strove to disclose pure objectivity, carefully purged of everything introduced into it by man’s conscious, volitional activity, and to depict the object as it existed ‘before it entered consciousness’. Within the confines of natural philosophy (theoretical natural science) the theoretical scientist ‘fears nothing more than interference of the subjective in this kind of knowledge’. Within the limits of transcendental philosophy (logic and epistemology), on the contrary, he was ‘most of all afraid that something objective has been implicated in the purely subjective principle of knowledge.’ To sum up: if transcendental philosophy were constructed just as correctly as natural philosophy, there would be nothing of the other in the structure of each and there could not be a single concept or theoretical determination between them; for such a determination would directly infringe the two supreme principles of logic, the law of identity and the principle of

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contradiction. It would simultaneously express both the objective and the subjective, and would contain directly identified opposites. The two given sciences could not therefore be formally united into one. It was impossible to develop two series of scientific (formally correct) determinations from one and the same concept because it would be formally incorrect and inadmissible from the standpoint of the rules of logic. Therefore philosophy on the whole was impossible as one science. From that Schelling concluded that the whole system of philosophy would ‘find consummation in two fundamental sciences, which, mutually opposed in principle and direction, seek each other out and complement each other’. There was not, and could not be, some ‘third’ science in which would be discovered whatever there was in common between the world in consciousness and the world outside consciousness, and which would be a system of laws and rules obligatory in the same way for the one world and the other. It was

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impossible in principle to present such laws and rules in the form of a science because it would then be built from the outset on an infringement of the law of identity. But there were, all the same, laws common to the world and knowledge, otherwise it would be senseless in general to speak of knowledge, of agreement of the objective and the subjective, and the very concept of truth as the coincidence of knowledge with its object would be nonsense. General laws consequently did operate, but not as rigidly binding rules, but rather as reasons not strictly formulated, related to the aspirations of the poet-artist who directly experienced his blood relationship and unity with the cognised object and with nature. The artist of genius and nature operated by the same laws. The identity of the laws of the subjective and objective worlds could only be realised in the act of creation. But creativity did not submit to formal absolute schematising, Simple, dying identical, and becoming be fossilised in it. Thus it came about that ‘an cannot

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comprehended

or

communicated

through

description, and not at all through conception. It can only be intuited.’ Here intuition was all powerful, the inspired intuition of creative insight, intellectual and aesthetic intuition. Thus it was, therefore, in and that was Schelling’s completed system by a culminated

philosophy of art. Thus the primary identity was a fact but was not expressible in a concept, was the initial premise of any concept, but was not determined through a concept. Identity was, as it were, made up of two always diverging trends of investigation, namely demonstration of how the objective was transformed into the subjective (which was the competence of theoretical natural science, spinning its thread from mechanics through chemistry to biology and anthropology, i.e. to man), and demonstration of how the subjective was transformed into the objective (which was the competence of transcendental philosophy, starting from knowledge and its forms as from fact, and demonstrating the

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objectivity, i.e. the universality and necessity, of knowledge). The problem consequently began to appear as follows: two diametrically opposite spheres stood facing one another contrasted in all their characteristics. Their identity (the fact of their agreement was truth) was realised precisely through the transition that transformed the one into the other. But the transition, the moment of the transition itself, was irrational and could not be expressed by a non-contradictory concept, because it was at that very moment that the transition from A into not-A took place, i.e. their coincidence, their identity. To express it in a concept meant to smash the form of the concept. Here Schelling came directly up against the narrowness of the Kantian logic, which attributed to the law of identity and the principle of contradiction the character of the absolute premises of the very possibility of thinking in concepts. For there was no room within these rules for the moment of the transition of opposites into one another, and it broke them.

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It did not even occur to him to
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. beginning with a quite justified statement of the fact that logic in its Kantian conception actually put an insurmountable barrier in the way of attempts to understand. and the act of knowing was forced again and again to make a leap. In his eyes therefore art and not science represented the highest form of mental activity. while agreeing that there was selfdestruction of the form of thinking here. that is to express. i. remained inexpressible in concepts. then the passage of consciousness into nature and vice versa. In other words. took the step toward rejection of logic in general. an act of irrational intuition. was forced in fact to conclude that real truth could not be caught and expressed through a concept. of truth. If the rules of general logic were absolute. in rigorously defined determinations. the fact of the transformation of opposites into one another in concepts. of poetic seizing of the absolute idea.Schelling. Schelling. by which the time-honoured identity of the subjective and the objective was realised. a jump.e.

In his own constructions. in his youth. that influenced the development of nineteenth century science. separating. And whereas he himself. This magic force also had to unite everything that reason (thought in general) was not in a position to join together but was only capable of ripping to bits. Instead he began to make up for and compensate the limitedness and insufficiency of the existing logic (mistaken by him as the inferiority of thought as such).reform logic itself in order to make it a means of expressing what appeared in intuition (contemplation) as a self-evident fact. and which in essence had a clearly marked dialectical character. Schelling kept adopting the pose of a God-inspired prophet and genius. an absolutely irrational capacity that it was impossible either to study or to teach. some even of genius. by the force of intellectual and aesthetic intuition. had had sufficient tact and
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. in spite of a mass of bold guesses and ideas. and choking to death. uniting without fear or doubt concepts that seemed to contemporary scientists to be fundamentally ununitable.

who adopted the empty schema from him but did not possess his erudition in science or his talent. he prepared the ground very thoroughly for Hegel. and had often hit the nail on the head by intuition. Schelling. terminologically ‘for others’.e. to classify and schematise. reduced his method and manner of philosophising to the caricature that Hegel later jeered at so caustically. Logic as such remained only an episode in Schelling’s system of ideas. his pupils and successors. of expressing it through a system of
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. For Schelling logic. was by no means a schema for producing knowledge. consequently. a scholastic description of rules of a purely formal order in accordance with which it was necessary only to formalise. i.competence in the field of the natural sciences. but served as a means of describing it verbally. And though he did not set himself the task of reforming it radically. knowledge obtained in quite another way and by quite other abilities. however. exposed the rigidity of Kant’s logic. an insignificant section of the transcendental philosophy.

done by the power of imagination. So Schelling confirmed dialectics as the genuine theory of scientific knowledge.
defined
and its
non-contradictorily recommendations
determined terms (Schelling himself called them Ultimately seemed only external. And here. in fact. After Schelling the problem consisted in uniting dialectics as the true schema of
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. verbally explicated forms of knowledge. which Schelling analysed very closely and circumstantially in the form of various ‘intuitions’. in the field of intuition and imagination he also discovered dialectics as the true schema of the productive. and nothing more.rigorously ‘concepts’). actively subjective capacity of man to understand and alter the world of the images and concepts of science. but then broke all its links with logic. His position returned logic once more to the pitiable condition in which it had been before the attempts of Kant and Fichte to reform it in accordance with the needs of the times. The process of producing knowledge was itself.

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. At this point the torch was taken up by Hegel.developing knowledge and logic as the system of rules of thinking in general. applied mutually schema unconnected of the real ‘things’? Or was logic simply the conscious and deliberately development of science? If it was. What was the relation of the rules of logic to the real schemas (laws) of the development of understanding? Were they different. it was all the more inadmissible to leave it in its old. so primitive form.

But where is the original? We cannot take
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.the copy and the original . In order to understand the Hegelian logic it is not enough just to clarify the direct sense of its propositions. Learning to read Hegel in a materialist way. at every step tracing the divergence between the copy and the original. means learning to compare his representation of the object critically with the object itself.5: Hegel — Dialectics as Logic Hegel’s solution of the problem of the subject matter of logic has played a special role in the history of this science.ready-made before him. and to restore for ourselves an image of the original from its distorted presentation. as Lenin read him and advised reading him. It would be an easy task if the reader had the two objects of this comparison . It is more important and difficult to consider the real subject matter through the fanciful turns of Hegel’s style. The copy exists. It is about this that we shall now speak. which will also give us a chance to understand Hegel critically.

The true logic of science is not given to us directly.the existing logical consciousness of the scientist as the original. for this consciousness itself must be tested for its logicality. That being so. accepting it as irreproachable and admitting of no doubts.
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. and itself presupposes a critical analysis of existing logical forms from the standpoint of their correspondence with the real requirements of the development of science. despite all its faults associated with idealism. and then converted into a consciously applied instrument for working with concepts. can offer more than the ‘logic of science’. critical study of the Science of Logic cannot be reduced to a simple comparison of its propositions with those of the logic by which scientists are consciously guided. it still has to be dug out and understood. into a logical method of resolving problems that do not admit of solution by traditional logical methods. And for an understanding of the real forms and laws of theoretical cognition Hegel’s Science of Logic.

while a magnifying one (the system of the fundamental principles of Hegelian logic) enabled him to see exactly. but with an object whose outlines are only beginning to be traced out for the first time in the course of a critical surmounting of the idealist constructions. This distorting lens. to understand clearly what the real object was that Hegel remains invisible to the eye not philosophically equipped. It is important. This reconstruction is feasible if the structure of the optics through which Hegel examined the object of his investigation is clearly understood. although in an idealistically distorted form. previously known prototype of it. which is the logic that sense. the dialectic of thought.So comparing the copy (the science of logic) with the original (with the actual forms and laws of theoretical understanding) proves to be quite a difficult matter. The difficulty is that Hegel’s presentation of the subject matter (in this case thought) has to be compared critically not with a ready-made. and to simple common
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. first of all.

so as to find the critical range immediately in regard to his presentation. In logic the object of scientific comprehension proves to be thought itself. while any other science is thinking about something else.investigated and described in his Science of Logic.
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. quite naturally. ‘That the subject matter of logic is thought. Hegel replied (and one again has to agree with him). The next question. In that definition and the conceptions expressed by it there is still nothing either of the specifically Hegelian or of the specifically idealist. It is simply the traditional ideas of the subject matter of logic as a science. with that everyone agrees. Later. however. In defining logic as thinking about thought. Hegel quite accurately indicated its sole difference from any other science. quite clearly and succinctly expressed.’ Hegel stressed in his Shorter Logic. logic as a science received the definition of thinking about thought or thought thinking about itself. arises from that and requires a no less clear answer. But what is thought? It goes without saying.

In order to gain an exhaustive knowledge of what life is.. we should have to go through all the forms in which it appears.that the sole satisfactory answer can only be an exposition of the heart of the matter. but this is no longer a definition. if only the most general boundaries of the object of investigation.e. however. a concretely developed theory. to indicate the field of the facts to which the given science must devote its attention. a ‘science of logic’.e.. All definitions are of little value. Otherwise the criterion for their selection will be unclear and its role will be tyrannous and arbitrary. and not an ordinary definition. and therefore in logic too. taking only those facts into
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. i.’ In any science. one has to mark everything out in advance and outline its contours.. from the lowest to the highest. a science of thought. (Compare Engels’ view in AntiDuhring: ‘Our definition of life is naturally very inadequate. i. The only real definition is the development of the thing itself.’ And later: ‘To science definitions are worthless because always inadequate.

and ignoring everything else as allegedly having no relation to the matter or to the competence of the science concerned. unanimously inadmissibly
broadened the subject matter of logic by his conception of thought. i. Hegel gave such a preliminary explanation.e. Neopositivists. above all the concepts traditionally referred to metaphysics. and everything else hangs on proper understanding of it. This is a very important point. including in the sphere of examination a mass of ‘things’ that one cannot call thought in the usual and strict sense. not concealing from the reader exactly what he understood by the word ‘thought’. both justified and unjustified. have hitherto reproach been Hegel directed for with precisely having at it.consideration that confirm its generalisations. and to ‘ontology’. It is no accident that the main objections to Hegel. to the science of things themselves. example. the system of categories (the universal definitions of reality outside
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.

Hegel actually understood as thought something at first glance enigmatic. But of course there is no such ‘thought’ as some superhuman force creating nature.
outside
subjective
thinking
understood as the psychic capability of man). the Neopositivist reproach must really be considered reasonable. even mystical.consciousness. independently of his head. and history.
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. purely fantastic object? In that case. Such definitions are capable of confusing and disorienting at the very start. Logic in his definition must be understood even as having a content that ‘shows forth God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of Nature and of a Finite Spirit’. and of ‘thought as such’. If thinking were to be so understood. But is Hegel’s logic then the presentation of a non-existent subject? Of an invented. of ‘pure thought’. and man himself and his consciousness from itself somewhere in the Universe. when he spoke of it as taking place outside man and apart from man. and when he considered the object of logic to be precisely that ‘absolute’ superhuman thought.

When you point out to a logician. he could reasonably reply that it was so much the worse for this thinking and that the theory did not need to be
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. and it is impossible to compare logic with the acts of thinking actually taking place in people’s heads because people think very illogically at every step. and not with another one. even elementarily illogically. that man’s real thinking does not occur as it is depicted in his theory. and that if empirically observed human thought is not like it. for criticism of a theory only makes sense when the theory is compared with the same object as it represents.how are we to rethink his constructions critically? With what. of the kind that Hegel had in mind. therefore. must we compare and contrast his strings of theoretical determinations in order to distinguish the truth in them from the fallacy? With the real thinking of man? But Hegel would reply that in his Science of Logic it is a matter of quite another object. with what real object. that is no argument against his logic. let alone according to a logic of a much higher order.

with their own embodiment in empirical acts of thought. Logic had in mind only logically immaculate thinking. did that then not wipe out any possibility whatsoever of checking whether or not they were correct? It is quite understandable that these principles would always be in agreement with thoughts that had previously been made to agree with them. and evaluated any deviation from its rules as a fact falling outside its subject matter and therefore to
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. it only meant that logical principles agreed with themselves. For logic as a science. In that case.adapted to the empirical but that real thought must be made logical and brought into harmony with logical principles. and logically incorrect thinking was not an argument against its schemas. a fundamental difficulty arises here. If it were only permissible to compare logical principles with logical thought. But it consented to consider only such thinking as logically immaculate as exactly confirmed its own ideas about thought. a very ticklish situation was created for theory. After all. however.

the illusion that logic as a theory had long ago acquired a fully closed. Schelling also understood Kant’s logic as an absolutely precise presentation of the principles and rules of thinking in concepts. and which made logic absolutely unselfcritical on the one hand and incapable of development on the other. and did not wish to consider contradictory facts.
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. That. In any other science such a claim would evoke consternation. which was presented by its devotees as standing to reason. although there must be millions and billions such? But surely that was exactly the traditional position of logic. completed character and not only was not in need of development of its propositions but could not be by its very nature. incidentally.be considered solely as a ‘mistake’ needing to be ‘corrected’. What kind of a theory was it that consented to take into account only such facts as confirmed it. was where Kant’s illusion originated.

and of
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. therefore it was necessary to bring the theory of thought into agreement with its real subject matter. Hegel saw the need for a critical reconsideration of traditional logic primarily in the extreme. as a matter of fact was something else. Kantian logic was only a limitedly true theory of thought. ‘ A comparison of the forms to which Spirit has risen in the worlds of Practice and Religion. glaring discrepancy between the principles and rules that Kant considered absolutely universal forms of thought and the real results that had been achieved by human civilisation in the course of its development. He saw in it not evidence of the organic deficiency of thought but only the limitations of Kant’s ideas about it.Hegel had doubts about the proposition that it was the rules of logic that prevented understanding of the process of the passage of the concept into the object and vice versa. the real subject matter of logic as a science. of the subjective into the objective (and in general of opposites into one another). Real thought.

deficient.Science in every department of knowledge Positive and Speculative .a comparison of these with the form which Logic. In functioning as thinking about the world. Spirit’s knowledge of its own pure essence has attained. logic) consequently lagged behind thinking about everything else.’ Thus the existing logical theories did not correspond to the real practice of thought. and thinking about thought (i. behind the thinking that was realised as the science of the external world. thought had achieved such success that beside it thinking about thought proved to be something quite incommensurable. laws. and
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. To take it on faith that human thought had really been and was guided by the rules. in the form of the whole organism of civilisation. and unworthy of it. that is. and poor.e. wretched. as consciousness fixed in the form of knowledge and things created by the power of knowledge. shows such a glaring discrepancy that it cannot fail to strike the most superficial observer that the latter is inadequate to the lofty development of the former.

for the first time. Hegel considered that the rules by which the ‘spirit’ was actually guided. Hegel’s posing of the matter played a special role because it. Schelling had also expressed this amazement of the ‘spirit’. onto an ability that was from the very outset something quite different from thought. without shifting everything hitherto not comprehended onto ‘intuition’. contrary to the illusions that it had created on its own account (in the person of professional logicians) and had set out in the form of textbooks of logic.e. quite rationally. had come to a standstill in amazement before its own creation. and it was just at this point that Hegel began to differ with him. Hence there arose the paradox that the human intellect. subjected
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. which had created modern culture.principles that in the aggregate constituted traditional logic was to make all the progress of science and practice simply inexplicable. i. could and must be brought out and set forth in the form of a concept.

like thought intuition. and directly at the verbal shaping of these ideas in speech. ideas. adopting it absolutely uncritically abilities from everyday with others usage). and how. above all the concept of thought.all the main concepts of logical science.e. according to the laws and rules dictated by it. represented one of man’s subjective psychic along sensation. with psychic activity in the course of which a person gave himself an account of what he was doing. memory. and so on and so forth. but at best only activities in accordance with thought. At first glance (and people usually proceed from such a ‘first glance’. that was no longer considered thinking. By thinking was also understood a special kind of activity directed. at reorganising the images that were in the individual’s consciousness. unlike practice. When man altered real things outside his head. terms) were called concepts. and not ideas. and became aware
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. to careful analysis. at altering ideas. will. Thought was thus identified with reflection. when expressed in speech (words. i.

So the Kantian logic appeared as a kind of honest confession of
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.of all the schemas and rules by which he acted. The sole job of logic then proved. It only introduced order into the schemas of existing consciousness. quite understandably. perhaps. It left the categories and methods of ordinary knowledge quite undisturbed’. Everything we have said also applied fully to Kant. Every individual could discover them for himself in his own consciousness because. As Hegel justly put it. he was guided by them (only not. true. even without any study of logic. ‘such logic had no other business than could be done through the activity of simple formal thought. systematically). to be simply the ordering and classifying of the corresponding schemas and rules. it came up against the facts of a mutual contradiction between the various schemas). and so it certainly produced nothing that one could not otherwise have done just as well’. which is why Hegel said that ‘the Kantian philosophy could not have any effect on the treatment of the sciences. only built them into a system (in so doing.

And the completely conscious thought that all the old logic had in view really assumed language. as it were. only insofar as it had expressed itself. possibly even without giving itself a proper evaluation of it.an exposition of what existing thought thought of itself. embodied itself in some external form. Having thus posed the problem Hegel proved to be the first professional logician who resolutely and consciously threw aside the old prejudice that thought was presented to the investigator only in the form of speech (external or internal. as its outward form of
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. so it was impossible to judge thinking by its self-opinion. or rather. as an object different from itself. and nothing more. speech. and how. oral or written). But just as it was a blunder to judge a person according to what and how he thought of himself. of its conceits . the word. The prejudice was not accidental. it was much more useful to examine what it was really doing.
of
its
systematically
expounded self-consciousness. thought could only look at itself from the side.existing
consciousness.

who noted that traditional (formal) ‘logic becomes conscious of itself in speech and so in many respects is a grammar absorbed with itself’. who directly identify thought with linguistic activity and logic with the analysis of language. incidentally. as the
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. like Trendelenburg. word. (This circumstance had in fact been recorded in the very name of logic. In other words thought achieved awareness of the schemas of its own activity precisely through and in language. The most striking thing about this is the self-conceit with which they project this archaic prejudice as the latest discovery of twentieth century logical thinking. Let us note in passing that all schools of logic. It is most outspokenly professed by Neopositivists. spoke of this. which is derived from the Greek logos.expression. having ignored Hegel’s criticism of the old logic have shared this old prejudice to this day as though nothing had happened. but also some of their opponents in principle. without exception.) Not only Hegel and the Hegelians.

as an axiom of the ‘logic of science’. plans. not only could. the things created by them. be considered manifestations of his thought. not the sole empirically observed form in which human thought manifests itself. But. man’s actions.manifestation to the world at long last of the principle of the scientific development of logic. and conscious intentions. but must. thoughts. Language (speech) is. The thought of which Hegel spoke discloses itself in human affairs every bit as obviously as in words. in real affairs man demonstrates the real modes of his thinking more adequately than in his narrations of them. in the course of actually shaping the world around him. and so too the results of his actions. Does man really not discover himself as a thinking being in his actions. Furthermore. nevertheless. Hegel demanded from the
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. that being so. in the lacework of word combinations. as acts of the objectifying of his ideas. in the making of things? Does he really only function as a thinking being when talking? The question is surely purely rhetorical. in chains of terms.

There was nothing mystical nor idealist in that. In other words. ‘invested’ in it by human activity. the forms of his thought embodied in natural materials. moreover. including in that tools and statues. factories and chancelleries. Thus a house appeared as the architect’s conception
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. it meant the forms (‘determinations’) of things created by the activity of the thinking individual. Thought revealed its force and real power not solely in talking but also in the whole grandiose process of creating culture and the whole objective body of civilisation. political organisations and systems of legislation. the whole ‘inorganic body of man’ (Marx). and above all in human affairs.very start that thought should be investigated in all the forms in which it was realised. in all their independence. outside the psyche of the human individual. It was on that basis that Hegel also acquired the right to consider in logic the objective determinations of things outside consciousness. workshops and temples. from that psyche. in the creation of things and events.

intentions. concepts. The understanding and careful analysis of thought in this aspect (investigation of the ‘active side’ as Marx called it in his first thesis on Feuerbach) was still not idealism. notions. by following such a path. and purposes. and the whole immense objective body of civilisation as thought in its ‘otherness’ (das idee in der Form des Anderssein). and so on. of the schemas to which men’s purposive activity was subordinated. plans. reflected in human
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.embodied in stone. a machine as the embodiment of the engineer’s ideas in metal. Logic. The whole history of humanity was correspondingly also to be considered a process of the ‘outward revelation’ of the power of thought. i. thus took the decisive step toward genuine (‘intelligent’) materialism. furthermore. toward understanding of the fact that all logical forms without exception were universal forms of the development of reality outside thought. in its sensual objective embodiment.e. as a process of the embodying of logic. as a process of the realisation of man’s ideas.

The subject matter of logic was no longer the abstract identical schemas that could be found in each individual consciousness. From Hegel’s standpoint the real basis for the forms and laws of thought proved to be only the aggregate historical process of the intellectual development of humanity understood in its universal and necessary aspects. He simply brought into the field of view of logic that real phase of the process of development of thought without understanding which logic could not and never would be able to become a real science. In considering thought in the course of its materialisation as well as in its verbal revelation Hegel did not go beyond the bounds of the analysis of thought at all. and common to each of them. beyond the limits of the subject matter of logic as a special science. a process quite independent of the will and consciousness of the separate individuals although realised at each of
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. but the history of science and technique collectively created by people.consciousness and tested in the course of millennia of practice.

In that. and through activity in the forms of things and events outside consciousness. to pose the problem of a special analysis of thought-forms. Hegel was able. the act of realising thought in object activity. according to Hegel. as a phase. ‘It is hardly surprising that economists. before Hegel. This process. when professional logicians. wholly under the influence of material interests.’
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. he ‘came very close to materialism’. also included. Before him such an aim had not arisen in logic. or the analysis of thought from the aspect of form. even overlooked the formal aspect of the propositions and conclusions they used as examples. have overlooked the formal side of the relative expression of value. In considering thought as a real productive process expressing itself not only in the movement of words but also in the changing of things. and even could not have. for the first time in the history of logic. in Lenin’s words.its stages precisely in the conscious activity of individuals.

was understood as a form of activity realised equally well in the movement of verbal terms and in the movement of the things involved in the work of the thinking being. as schemas of the joining together of terms signifying general ideas. judgments and inferences functioned in speech. there then for the first time only. but the logical form expressed in these figures. And since logical form. i. arose the possibility of analysing it specially as such.e. i. and the conception of it was simply borrowed from metaphysics and ontology. in his sense).Logicians before Hegel had recorded only the external schemas in which logical actions. the category. despite the fact that he had nevertheless seen categories precisely as the principles of judgments (with objective significance. remained outside their sphere of investigation. So it had been even with Kant. about which Marx spoke in the first edition of Das Kapital.e. of abstracting it from the special features of its expression in some partial material or other (including those which were linked with the
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.

In logos. puns however that threw light on the genetic relationship of the ideas expressed by the words. myth. in reason. sensuously perceived thing.e. or rather legend and true story. a legend of high deeds (cf. (Incidentally. Russian byl’. was very characteristic of Hegel. i. the form of Russian epic). the actual state of affairs (or things).specific features of its realisation in the fabric of language) . fact. meaning a true story. for example. as the essence of the matter. the point. bylina. what really happened).e. situation. myth and fact. the subject
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. i. everything that is or was in the matter itself (cf. Sage is legend. Sache is a broad capacious word signifying not so much a single. This etymology is used in the Science of Logic to express very important shades of meaning. hence ‘saga’. Sage und Sache. which sound as follows in Lenin’s translation and materialist interpretation: ‘"With this introduction of Content into logical consideration". were equally expressed in the logical aspect (in contrast to the psychological-phenomenological). play on words.

not things but the laws of their movement. precisely. like contemplation." Considered as the activity of the thinking being in its universal form. desires. it itself appears in another aspect than when we only speak. All these are only further specifications of thought. whether in articulated vibrations of the ambient air and their identifying signs or in some other natural.becomes not Dinge but die Sache. der Begriff der Dinge [i. in all wishes. physical substance. While we so conceive thought.e. the action of thinking took place or takes place. ‘In all human contemplation there is thought. In the Hegelian view it was quite irrelevant how. we have intellectual power over and above any other abilities. etc. materialistically. but the essence. and on the whole any mental activity.’
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. recollections. just as thought is the general in all conceptions. thought was also fixed in those of its schemas and moments as remained invariant in whatever special material the relevant activity was performed and whatever product it put out at any one instant. imagination. the concept of things]. not things. will and the like.

obligations. intuition. included the human ‘determination of sensation. etc. was the subject matter of logic. images.All the universal schemas being depicted in the activity of the thinking being. as a capacity that creates knowledge in any forms. the science of thought. and ‘penetrates’ into them. must therefore be considered not less as logical parameters of thought than the schemas of its expression in language. Thought. including that directed toward immediately intuited or represented material. aims. in fact. purely formal logic). or in the form of the figures known in the old logic. including that of the contemplated images. and hence not simply the subjective. the thought that really ‘effects everything human and makes humanity human’. psychic act of using or treating words. as activity altering images of the external world in general expressed in words (and not the words in themselves). and also thoughts and concepts’ (‘thoughts and concepts’ here have the meaning of the old. Thought in the broadest sense of the word..
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. ideas.

thought and the thought-form did not appear at first to the thinking being as forms of his own activity at all (of his ‘self’ . morals. engineering.Thought in general thus ‘appears at first not in the form of thought but as feeling.forms that are to be distinguished from thought as form’. In other words.
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. and was therefore counterposed to conscious thinking as the form of external reality. creating a certain product. and ideas. he had already to think. and so on. intuition. though still not realising the logical schemas and categories within which this thinking took place. but as forms of the product itself. was ‘sublated’ in them. sense images. only in logic.e. But before man began to think about thought. The thought-form as such appears to us only in the course of thinking about thought itself. Thought was thus realised at first as activity in all the diversity of its outward manifestations.das Selbst). but already embodying them in the form of the concrete statements and concepts of science. The thought-form here was ‘sunk’ into the material of concrete thoughts. i. imagination .

Neglect of this very important distinction led the old logic into a dual error. and having thoughts about them’. was thus the same thought as had been realised in the form of knowledge of the world. desires. as it appeared in logic. as the forms of tools. etc. which we knew through thought-activity.i. art.. machines. and so on. engineering. Thought. etc. in the mirror of the external world. psychic capability of the individual’ and therefore counterposed to thought so understood the whole sphere of ‘intuition. and as the forms of realised aims. Thought could not ‘see’ itself otherwise than in the mirror of its own creations. states. and will’ as something existing outside thought and having
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. because ‘there is a difference between having sensations and ideas. determined and penetrated by thought.e.. On the one hand it only defined thought as ‘a subjective. images and concepts. But it was far from the same thing in form. ideas. intuition and representation. wishes. of concrete knowledge. and morality. in the form of science.

in not distinguishing in form between the relative strength of the two revelations of thought mentioned above. too. taking the form of the concept for the form of intuition. under the form of concept. the old logic embraced the concept itself only from the aspect from which it was really not distinguished in any way from any notion or intuitive image expressed in speech. as the object of reflection existing outside thought. Hence. As a result. and vice versa. insofar as it was expressed in speech or in a term. it came about that. On the other hand. in the shape of which it had originally appeared and was hidden. too. and consequently confused the one with the other.nothing in common with it. the image of intuition or contemplation held in consciousness by means of speech. which recorded it. it could also not say how the thought-form as such (‘in and for itself’) was differentiated from the form of intuition and representation. the old logic considered every kind of idea or notion whatsoever. from the aspect of the abstract and
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. that is to say.

Hence his definition: ‘The concept is. which was really just as common to the concept as to the notion. of some identity of the objects of intuition. Kant also took that stand. Thus it came about that it took the form of abstract identity or abstract universality for the specific form of the concept.general.
fundamental criteria of the thought-form in
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. For him a concept was primarily a synonym for real understanding of the essence of the matter and not simply an expression of something general. understanding by concept any general notion insofar as it was fixed by a term. consequently a general idea. a general image or representation of that which is common to many objects..’ Hegel himself required a more profound solution of the problem of the concept and of thinking in concepts from logic. and could therefore only raise the law of identity and the principle to the of contradiction rank of in determinations general.. provided that it can be included in several objects. A absolute.

concept disclosed the real nature of a thing and not its similarity with other things. and the simple abstract generality.e. Its form was: A is B (i. relating it to notion). a unity that was also revealed through manifold forms of judgment and inference. Hegel distinguished clearly between universality. of all the single objects of a given kind. not-A). identicalness. which dialectically contained the whole richness of the particular and the singular within itself and in its determinations. And that was
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. but also the special nature or peculiarity of the object. and fading or disappearance of single things. and came out into the open in judgments. That was why the form of the concept proved to be a dialectical unity of universality and particularity. The universal concept expressed itself the actual law of the origin. It was not surprising that any judgment destroyed the form of abstract identity and represented its self-evident negation. development. and not only should it express the abstract generality of its object (that was only one of the moments of a concept.

of their meant to see in real. The central concept of Hegel’s logic was therefore the concrete-universal: he brilliantly illustrated its distinction from the simple. such sensuously intuited things only an insignificant real content. as Hegel demonstrated with a mass of examples. empty part definitions. of a common sign or attribute. the real law (the immanent nature of the single thing) did not always appear on the surface of phenomena in the form of a simple identicalness. If that were so there would be no need for any theoretical science. because. The job of thought was not limited to empirically registering common attributes. of one-sided. much truer and deeper. or in the form of identity. only determinations of them as were already ‘jelled’ in consciousness and functioned there as ready-
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. abstract universality of the sphere of notions in his famous pamphlet Wer denkt abstrakt? (Who thinks abstractly?). To think abstractly meant to be enslaved by the force of current catchphrases and clichés.already quite another angle on the concept.

Hence the ‘magic force’ of current catchphrases and expressions. which fence reality off from the thinking person instead of serving as the form of its expression. with the schemas of
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. In fulfilling them. he was constantly forced at the same time to perform actions that would not fit in. in any way. From premises of that kind Hegel concluded that real thought in fact took other forms and was governed by other laws than those that current logic of considered thinking. and not a scheme for manipulating readymade ideas and notions.made stereotypes. In this last interpretation logic finally became a real logic of understanding of unity in variety. with his schemas of conscious thinking. the sole had determinations Thought
obviously to be investigated as collective. schematic presentation of existing ideas. a logic of critical and self-critical thought and not a means of the uncritical classification and pedantic. performed only partial functions. cooperative activity in the course of which the individual. however.

He showed it its own image. pointing out those of its features that it preferred not to notice and not to recognise.ordinary logic. Hegel required only one thing of thinking in
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. he counterposed to the assertions. rules and basic propositions but the process of the practical realisation of its own principles in real thought. Hegel criticised traditional logic. rules. and basic propositions of logic not some kind of opposing assertions. by the same ‘immanent procedure’ that was one of his main conquests. As can easily be seen. not acknowledged as logical interpretations. Hence the ‘topsyturvy’ situation arose in which the real forms and laws of thought were expressed and understood as some kind of external necessity. namely. as an extralogical determination of the action. In really taking part in common work he was all the time subordinating himself to the laws and forms of universal thought. and on the sole ground that they were still not revealed and realised by logic. and the thinking appropriate to it. though not conscious of them as such.

and this critique (self-criticism) of reason and its circumscribing logic led to the conclusion that ‘the nature of thought is itself dialectics. . Kant had actually reached a similar conclusion. incomplete. now it could maintain its precarious position only if it quite consciously rejected facts unacceptable to it. That was the very critique of reason.accordance with logic. and whereas before him logic could be unself-critical out of ignorance. namely uncompromising consistency in applying the principles adduced. from the standpoint of reason itself. into contradiction. The historically unavoidable defect of Kantian logic was that it pedantically as one-sided. that Kant had begun. only by becoming consciously unself-critical. with inexorable force. that as understanding it must fall into the negative of itself.’. to negation of the principles themselves abstract. . And he showed that it was the consistent application of these principles (and not departure from them) that in fact led inevitably. and
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.

and Schelling. coming up against the logical contradiction that it itself brought to light just because it rigorously followed its own principles. always baulked at it. Fichte. bringing out. onto ‘moral postulates’. concretely the means of the intelligently and resolving
contradictions into which it inevitably fell when consciously guided by the traditional. and indicating to thought. purely formal logic. however.schematised and described a mode of thought that led to a bringing out and sharp formulation of the contradictions contained in any concept but did not show how they could and should be resolved logically without shifting this difficult task onto ‘practical reason’. as precisely in finding. The old logic. Hegel. was the real distinction between Hegel’s conception of thought and logic and all preceding ones. too. That. and always strove to find an error or mistake in it
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. retreated to analysis of the preceding movement of thought. saw the main job facing logic after the work of Kant. and other factors and abilities lying outside logic.

It was necessary to go even further back. (It never hurts. No mistake. to the realm of lower forms of consciousness (lower. to uncomprehended contemplation. where there was really no contradiction for the simple reason that it had still not been disclosed and clearly expressed. aesthetic intuition. that is. since the contradiction did not develop through a mistake. despairing of managing by itself to resolve the contradiction into which it had got itself. had been made in the preceding thinking. an obstacle in the way of concrete analysis of the essence of the matter. For formal logical thinking contradictions thus became an insurmountable barrier to the forward movement of thought. It could not be otherwise. it ultimately proved. It therefore also came about that ‘thought. of course.e. to go back and analyse the preceding course of argument and check whether there has not been a formal
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. turns back to the solutions and reliefs that were the spirit’s lot in its other modes and forms’. i. in relation to conceptual thinking). sense perception.leading to the contradiction.

and resolved by the same logical thinking as had brought it out when a definite concept was being developed. as a result of checking. that a given logical contradiction is really nothing but the result of committing an error or mistake somewhere. Like Kant he understood that they did not arise at all through the negligence or carelessness of individual thinking persons but unlike Kant he understood that they could and must be resolved and must not always be preserved as antinomies. It may turn out. like Kant.) Hegel also suggested that a contradiction should be resolved as well as disclosed. never dreamed of denying such a case. of course. had in mind only those antinomies that developed in thought as a result of the most formally ‘correct’ and faultless argumentation. Hegel. He treated both the origin and the mode of resolution of logical contradictions differently.mistake.
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. and here the recommendations of formal logic have a quite rational sense and value. for that also happens not infrequently. He.

Whereas Kant’s ‘dialectic’ was only the final. and not imaginary. where it was a matter actually of the statement of the logically unresolvable antinomies of theoretical cognition. according to Hegel. engineering. third part of logic (the doctrine on the forms of understanding and reason). in the course of developing science. and all the spheres he called the ‘objective spirit’. and ‘morality’. with Hegel it appeared quite another matter. contradictions in determinations. i.But so that it could resolve them thought must fix them sharply and clearly in advance. Dialectics. as real. With him the sphere of the logical was divided
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. was the form (or method or schema) of thought that included the process both of elucidating contradictions and of concretely resolving them in the corpus of a higher and more profound stage of rational understanding of the same object. as logical contradictions.e. on the way toward further investigation of the essence of the matter. This conception immediately brought about constructive shifts in the whole system of logic. precisely as antinomies.

as follows 1. each of which was taken in the form in which it had been developed in the history of thought. That called for critical treatment of all
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. that is of any concept or of any truth in general’. In the empirical history of thought (as in any given. the dialectical or negatively reasonable.e. i. but are only moments of any logically real nature. three main directions were distinguished in it. however. could not be obtained by a simple uniting of these three aspects. following one after the other. Hence we got the illusion that they could be depicted as three different sections (or ‘parts’) of logic. Hegel specially stressed that ‘these three aspects in no case constitute three parts of logic. the speculative or positively reasonable. historically achieved state of it) these three aspects appeared either as three consecutive ‘formations’ or as three different but closely related systems of logic. the abstract or rational. Logic as a whole.into three main sections or aspects. 3. 2.

‘Thought as understanding remains stuck in firm determination and does not get beyond differentiation of the latter. embodiment appeared
dogmatism. 2.’ Historically this moment appears as scepticism.’ The as separate of this (isolated) ‘moment’ and in its historical thought logical.e. those historically last achieved. feeling bewildered among opposing. as the state in which thought. corresponding to the stage of scepticism. ‘The dialectical moment is the own selfabolition of such ultimate determinations and their transition into their opposites. purely formal logic. Hegel characterised the three ‘moments’ of logical thought that should constitute Logic as follows. 1. is powerless to choose and prefer one of them.three aspects from the standpoint of higher principles. equally ‘logical’ and mutually provoking dogmatic systems. i. Logical selfawareness.
theoretical self-awareness as ‘general‘. i. was distinguished in the Kantian
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. such a limited abstraction applies to it as existing and being for itself.e.

3.conception of dialectics as a state of the insolubility of the antinomies between dogmatic systems. when thinking was
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.’ Hegel also saw systematic treatment of this last ‘moment’ (and correspondingly critical rethinking of the first two from the angle of the third) as the historically pressing task in logic. Scepticism (Kant’s type of ‘negative dialectic’) was higher than dogmatism both historically and in content because the dialectic included in reason or understanding was already realised. and therefore his own mission and the aim of his work. When critically rethought in the light of the principles only now elicited. Then a logic was created such that. and existed not only ‘in itself’ but ‘for itself’. the affirmation that is contained in their resolution and their transition. the ‘moments’ considered ceased to be independent parts of logic and were transformed into three abstract aspects of one and the same logical system. ‘The speculative or positively reasonable conceives the unity of determinations in their opposition.

idea). thought became fully self-critical and was in no danger of falling into either the dullness of dogmatism or into the sterility of sceptical neutrality.(2) the doctrine of essence. Hence.guided by it. The division of logic into the objective (the first two sections) and the subjective coincided at first glance with the old division of philosophy into ontology and logic proper. there followed the external. and (3) the doctrine of the notion (concept. His position on this question calls besides for a thorough commentary since superficial criticism of his conception of logic and its subject matter has so far been primarily that his position ignored the opposition (contrast) between the subjective and the objective (between thinking
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. in logic. the opposition between the subjective and the objective (in their ordinary meaning) disappeared. formal division of logic into (1) the doctrine of being. too. but Hegel stressed that such a division would be very inexact and arbitrary because.

and being) and therefore casuistically produced specifically logical schemas of thought for the ontological thought determination on the of things outside universal and. in concepts). and in any case he ascribed much
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. naive blindness in relation to the contrast between have thought been and the reality. in science. and (b) logicalising reality. Hegel saw the difference and. In fact. thus committing two sins: (a) hypostatising logical forms. and was much more acutely aware of it than his naive critics among the Kantians. however. of between the concept and its object.
definitions of the reality outside thought for schemas of the logical process. contrary. what is more important. the contradiction (opposition) between the world of things outside consciousness and the world of thought (the world in thought. Hegel’s ‘error’ was not so simple. then Kant’s dualism would apex philosophical wisdom. and was not in the least characterised by the evaluation cited above. If the original sin of Hegelianism had really been a simple.

greater significance for logic to this opposition than. The last-named do not exist in thought simply or even so much as schemas and rules of conscious thinking. with its real universal forms and laws. he posed the task of bringing it (i. The point is quite another one.
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.e. with real thought. positivists do (who. but rather as universal schemas of objective thinking that are realised not so much as a subjective psychic act as the productive process that created science. thought’s awareness of the universal schemas of its own work) into correspondence with its real object. say. and thus also from Hegel’s solution of the problem of the relation of thought and the world of things.e. i. directly identify the concept and the object of the concept). especially in a logic. and another understanding of it follows from the specifically Hegelian conception of thought. That is why. when Hegel formulated a programme for the critical transformation of logic as a science. technique and morality.

never had been. Kant. and never would be. and the logical forms of development of science and technique really stood in opposition to the consciousness and will of the individual as quite objective limits to his individually performed actions. ‘According to these determinations. in particular Neopositivists. and they can also be taken to include the forms that are considered for the present in ordinary logic and are looked upon only as forms of conscious
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. Fichte) is topical in the struggle against many of their present-day successors. Hegel of course was right in many respects. and his critique of the subjective idealist interpretation of the logical (Hume. according to Hegel. But. even as limits dictated to him from outside. there was no other consciousness than that of the individual. As social formations science and technique (‘the materialised power of knowledge’ as Marx defined it) exist and develop of course outside the individual’s consciousness. thoughts can be called objective.In defending the objectivity of logical forms so understood.

. what Hegel affirmed within the limits of consideration of pure thought was much more rigorous and consistent than the logic before him.thought. scientific determinations. no facet of the specifically Hegelian. idealism.. too) did not in general speak just about things as such. i. and he justly reproached it precisely
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. It was in that sense that he asserted that ‘in logic thoughts are so conceived that they have no other content than that belonging to the thought itself and produced through it’. In other words logic had in mind not things but those of their determinations as were posited by the action of thought. he had in mind exclusively things comprehended in thoughts. Logic here coincides with Metaphysics. One cannot reproach Hegel with having allegedly extended the boundaries of the subject matter of logic impermissibly so that it began to embrace not only thought but things.e. with the science of things conceived in thought. objective. of course.e. Hegel (and Kant. Thus. i.’ In this conception of the objectivity of thought-forms there was as yet.

It was equivalent to a demand for a critical analysis to be made of the thought-activity that had engendered the determinations of the old metaphysics.for not having been able to confine itself rigorously within the bounds of its own subject matter. and for having imported into it material not assimilated by thought and not reproduced by thought-activity. If we
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. But such an investigation was already thought. and the activity taking place in those very forms was the act of applying them. Hegel had no doubt that ‘thought-forms must not be used without having been subjected to investigation’ and that ‘we must make the thought-forms themselves the object of cognition’. His requirement of including all the categories (the subject matter of the old metaphysics and ontology) in logic in no way meant going beyond the limits of thought. and for those thought-forms to be brought out that both logic and metaphysics had applied quite uncritically and unconsciously. without clearly realising what they consisted of.

looked on logic as investigation (cognition) of thought-forms. The subject matter of logic then proved to be those really universal forms and patterns within which the collective consciousness of humanity was realised. must determine their limits and demonstrate their defects themselves. he wrote. in the work of universal thought. they themselves inquire into themselves. That will then be that activity of thought that will soon be given separate consideration as dialectics. The course of its development. they are the object and the activity of the object itself. And inasmuch as the individual was involved in the common cause. was also seen as that ‘whole’ to the interests of which all the individual’s subordinated. this investigation ‘must also unite the activity of thought-forms and their critique in cognition. . The thought-forms must be taken in and for themselves. empirically realised as the history of science and technique. he was continually forced to separate logical acts were
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. .

in logic. The schemas (forms and laws) of universal thought would be realised unconsciously through his psyche. without their expression in logical concepts and categories. the object of investigation. fully and clearly realising what it was doing. although these acts were performed by his own thinking.perform actions dictated ‘by the interests of the whole’ and not confined to the schemas of ‘general’ logic.e. thought that had already become aware of the schemas. but without logical consciousness of them. He would naturally not realise his actions in logical concepts. forms.) In this connection Hegel introduced one of his most important distinctions between thought ‘in itself’ (an sich). and laws of its own work and had already worked quite consciously in accordance with them. principles. Logic was also consciousness. (Not ‘unconsciously’ in general. and how it was doing it. which also constituted the subject matter. and thought ‘for itself’ (fur sich selbst). the expression through concepts and categories of those laws and forms
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. i.

In logic it also became the object for itself . In logic thought had consequently to become the same ‘for itself’ as it had earlier been only ‘in itself’. That also meant that the principle of the identity of the subjective and the objective must be introduced into logic as the highest principle. with the real universal and necessary (objective) forms and laws of universal (and not individual) thought. with real thought. with the really universal forms and laws of development of science. technique. i. and correctly.e. Hegel therefore also formulated the task of bringing logic into line with its real subject matter. and morality. adequately. In other words he wanted to make the subjective consciousness of thought about itself identical with its object.in accordance with which the process of thinking ‘in itself’ (an sich) took place. the principle that the real forms and laws of thought must be delineated in logic exactly. and
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. The principle of the identity of subject and object signified nothing more.

In defending the objectivity of logical forms Hegel of course stood head and shoulders above (and closer to materialism) than all those who up to the present have reproached him with having ‘hypostatised’ logical forms in order to defend their version of the identity of thought and object as a purely conventional principle. and identity of this thought (as consciously performed activity) with itself as unconsciously performed productive activity. because one and the same thought was both object and subject in logic. or as activity hitherto taking place with a false consciousness of its own actions.did not signify any ‘hypostatisation’ of the forms of subjective thought. of the concept and that which is thought in it. and it was a matter of the agreement coincidence. Hegel was 100 per cent right in his critique of the subjective idealist version of the logical and of its objectivity (as merely the agreement of all thinking individuals. as merely the identity . as the principle of the identity of sign and thing designated.read equality of all the schemas by
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.

’) Thus the statement that there was no difference for logic between the subjective and the objective did not mean anything else on Hegel’s lips than an affirmation that logic must consider. And within it there must be room both for those schemas that prior to Kant were considered simply determinations of things outside consciousness and for those that were usually considered to be ‘specific’ to consciousness and had allegedly no relation to things outside the mind. Fichte.. (Marx. beginning with the categories and finishing up with the figures of judgments and conclusions.
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. incidentally. His critique not only hit at Kant. literally all the logical schemas of thought activity. but also strikes all today’s Neopositivists. and Schelling. within its own theory. and link together in one system. also defined the categories of political economy as ‘objective thought-forms’: ‘They are the socially valid.. and therefore objective thought-forms.. within itself.which each Ego taken separately operated).

etc. materialised mental. can only be discovered within logic itself. of course. but he did require them to be explained and disclosed within logic itself and not to be presumed in advance.. that were ‘posited’ or formulated by thought itself. but solely those determinations that appeared to the mind in science. judgment. ‘The relation of such forms as concept.’ Hegel thus did not include the determinations of things as they existed outside the mind or in everyday consciousness in logic at all. and conclusion to other forms like causality. And since science was the realised force (faculty) of thought. uncritically borrowed from the old metaphysic and its corresponding logic. he also saw primarily
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. He required the one and the other to be included in logic in critically rethought form. and in theoretical consciousness. theoretical labour.Hegel did not dream of repudiating the differences between the categorial schemas given in the determinations of categories and the figures of formal logic.

‘objectified’ determinations of thought in the determinations of things. he nevertheless saw more within those boundaries than previous logicians. and saw those logical (universal) schemas of developing thought that the old logic had not considered universal at all and had
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. While remaining within the boundaries of the investigation of thought. Hegel thus did not go outside the framework of the subject matter of logic at all but only beyond the limits of the notions of earlier logicians about these limits. The requirement of including all categories in logic was therefore equivalent to requiring a critical analysis to be made of those activities of thought that were materialised or objectified in the concepts of the old metaphysic. and to requiring disclosure of the logic of thought that was earlier realised in the form of various schemas of the universe. and only of thought. and so to requiring a critical understanding of all the categories that the old logic had taken over quite uncritically from ontological systems.

And if man thinks. Man can break rules. Logic thus proved to be pinned to discovery and investigation of the objective laws governing the subjective activity of individuals. A law can be ‘broken’ in one way only.therefore not included in the theory. unlike laws. and does so at every step. i.e. That is in what Hegel saw the true difference between the real laws of thought and the rules that the old logic had promoted to the rank of laws. Because laws cannot be broken. by escaping from the realm that is governed by
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. they were forced. to express the results of their subjective efforts. which cannot be omitted without the object itself. insofar in general as they thought. thus demonstrating that they are not laws. in this case thought. then his activities are subordinated to law and cannot overstep its bounds. ceasing to exist. although he may at the same time break the rules in the most flagrant way. and those forms in which. whether or not the individuals so wished it. they constitute the determinateness of the object. by ceasing to think. or whether or not they realised it.

took place precisely through breach (or removal) of all the rules that had been established for thought by the old logic. a fact of conscious thought. was not aware of itself. and proved to be a fact outside thought. through their dialectical negation. although it took place within the latter. But the constant negation of the rules established by conscious thought for itself got out of control. it was also transformed into a fact of consciousness. But for man such a ‘way out’ is equivalent to overstepping the bounds of human existence in general.e. But as soon as this fact was recognised as a universal and necessary logical thought-form. and the latter became
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. technique. Hegel also showed that the real development of determinations. not to mention the process of development of science. i. and morality. the real forward movement of thought.the laws of thought and where they operate as inexorably as the law of gravitation in the world of spatially determined bodies. even in the simplest cases. Thought had this fact ‘in itself’ but not ‘for itself’.

e. And when Kant considered the forms of thought as some ready-made object. i. without being
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. The subject matter of logic consequently could not merely be the forms that had already been realised or apprehended.e. despite its own consciousness of itself. or to classify them. But now it became ‘for itself’ precisely what it had previously been only ‘in itself’. They had to be brought out in the very course of reasoning about them. But if logic was to be a science. in the course of actual thinking about thought.consciously dialectical. It was impossible to grasp them ready-made. his logic represented only an uncritical classification of existing notions about thought. i. already depicted (realised. and unproved by thought. Previously it had only been so ‘in itself’. and had already been included in existing consciousness (in textbooks of logic and metaphysics). it must be a critical. comprehended). systematic investigation that did not accept a single determination on faith.

actions to which thought had had to submit during the historical process of its realisation in the form of science. too. and laws of this thought were here subjected to criticism not by comparing them with some object lying outside them.reproduced by it quite consciously. In that way. the very identity of the forms of cultivated thought with the forms of the unconsciously performed actions of the intellect must be carried out. principles. forms. Logic was nothing else (or rather should be nothing else) than the proper apprehension of those forms and laws within which the real thinking of people took place. The identity of thought and the conceivable. as the
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. art and morality. but solely by bringing out the dialectic they included in themselves and which was discovered immediately as soon as we began in general to think. technique. rules. The schemas. rigorously and fully realising what we were doing and how we were doing it. In this investigation criticism of the thought-forms known to cultivated thinking was only possible and thinkable as self-criticism.

probability. causality. that the schemas of cultivated thought (i.e. It was merely a matter of this. i. necessity. Logic recognised the activities of such a theoretician as logical also when they were even formally not quite irreproachable from the standpoint of the canons of the old logic. i. universal process which we also call the development of science.e. If the schema of the activity of a theoretician coincided with that of the development of his science. with the ‘logic’ dictated by its content.principle
of
the
logical
development
and
construction of logic. signified nothing more.e. Hegel therefore began to consider all the categories (of quality. the general and
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. the identity of his thinking with that impersonal. Hegel would attest the logicality of his activity. quantity. measure. and the science was thus developed through his activity. of the processes taking place in the consciousness of the individual) should coincide with those of the structure of the science in the movement of which the individual was involved.

For him they were not at all the most general determinations of the things given in intuition or contemplation or in direct experience to each individual. in the individual’s own experience (were revealed in action. did thought become ‘for itself’ what it had been ‘in itself’.e. inborn) in each individual consciousness (as Kant. because only in it. in processing of the data of perception) not in the
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. within the individual Ego. not transcendental schemas of synthesis directly inherent (i. and Schelling had in fact treated them). Fichte. They were there at best only ‘in themselves’. only in the form of unrealised tendencies and so not brought to awareness. Categories themselves. and not in the experience of the isolated individual. technical. and moral ‘perfecting’ of the human race. Categories were only discovered and demonstrated their determinations through the historically developing scientific. and so on and so forth) in quite a new way. It was impossible to discover these thought-forms in the separate consciousness taken in isolation.the particular.

through a frankly dialectical process that. They were universal determinations of the object as and how it appeared in the eyes of science. impersonal. gradually depicted in the aggregate scientific consciousness of humanity. Categories were therefore also universal forms of the origin of any object in thought. like a huge centrifuge. in the ether of ‘universal thought’.whole fullness and dialectical complexity of their composition and connections but only in abstract. one-sided aspects. debate. ultimately separated the purely objective schemas of thought from the purely subjective (in the sense of individual. It was therefore impossible to derive them from analysis of the experience of the isolated individual. and featureless thought in general. i. and as a result crystallised out logic. They were only discovered through the very complex process of the interaction of’ a mass of single minds mutually correcting each other in discussion. Hegel consented to call
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. a system of determinations of purely universal.e. arbitrary) schemas of activity. and confrontations.

therefore.
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. physical material. however. decisive features and schemas).determinations
of
things
only
those
determinations that had been developed by science. Hegel. therefore. Categories were the forms of organisation of this experience (described by Hegel in his Phenomenology of Mind). in the scientific concept of the external thing. They were. only in its main. not of every individual. by active thought. determinations of thought embodied in the object. and only therefore. none other than thought-forms realised in concrete material. naturally. and ‘reproduced’ in their individual consciousness the path taken by human thought (of course. also spoke of the identity of thought and object and defined the object as a concept realised in sensuous. The determinations of categories. but only of those who in the course of their education had mastered the historical experience of humanity. i e. could also function as determinations of things in the contemplation (experience) of the individual.

impersonal thought. reproduction. rising gradually from the zero level of its erudition to the highest stages of spiritual culture at the given moment. In individually repeating the experience of humanity. and so acted according to the same laws and in the same forms as the impersonal ‘universal spirit’ of humanity.Categories were thus universal forms of the reconstruction. by the power of their collective. and as schemas of the individual mastery (reproduction) of the whole world of images created by the thought of preceding generations and standing opposed to the individual as a quite
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. in the consciousness of the individual of those objects that had been created before him by the collective efforts of past generations of thinking beings. That means that categories appeared at once as universal schemas of the scientific formation of the individual consciousness. which had created the world of spiritual and material culture surrounding him from the cradle. this individual also repeated that which had been done before him and for him by the ‘universal spirit’.

This world was the materialised thought of humanity. and the individual had to deobjectify. and made them forms of his/her own activity. realised in the product. the modes of activity that were realised in it. was alienated thought in general. and it was in that the process if his/her education properly consisted. he/she also possessed them. and Otherwise they and remained only general forms of the things given contemplation representation. In the trained mind categories actually functioned as active forms of a concept. the norms of morals and justice. and arrogate to himself. technique and morality. When the individual had them in his/her experience. With this was linked the naive fetishism that directly accepted the available concepts and notions of science about things. counterposed to thought as a reality existing outside it and independently of it. the forms of the state and
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. in as thought-forms. the world of the concepts of science.objective world of spiritual and material culture. and knew and realised them.

practical realisation through action. and the expression of their essence. in the world
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. It could not reproduce or repeat the process of thought that had brought them into being and therefore. for purely objective determinations of things in themselves. Hegel’s conception of thought (in the context of logic) thus of necessity also included the process of the ‘objectification of thought’ (Vergegenstandlchung oder Entausserung des Denkens).e. It believed not only that these things appeared so today in the eyes of the thinking person but also that they were really so. moreover. si. It believed quite uncritically. on trust. naturally. they were produced by thought. considered them eternal and unalterable determinations of things in themselves. and did not know how.political system and the similar products of the thinking of people who had objectified their own conscious activity in them. the state and God. It accepted them as such only because it did not know that they had not been created without the involvement of thought. in sensuous-physical material. its sense-object. everything that it was told about these things in the name of science.

as the subjectivemental act of reasoning (according to the rules) expressed in speech. and made a fundamental advance in the understanding of thought and in the science of thought. and in books.e. the process of activity on sense objects that altered things in accordance with a concept.
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.of
sensuously
contemplated
(intuited)
things. it could be judged much better ‘by its fruits’ than by the notions that it created about itself. in speeches. Since thought outwardly expressed itself (sich entaussert. Hegel thus directly introduced practice into logic. sich entfremdet. therefore. began to be considered here as just as important a level in the development of thought and understanding. ‘alienates itself’. i. ‘makes itself something outside itself’) not only in the form of speech but also in real actions and in people’s deeds. Thought.
Practice. in accordance with plans matured in the womb of subjective thought. that was realised in people’s actual actions also proved to be the true criterion of the correctness of those subjectivemental acts that were outwardly expressed only in words.

which constituted an epoch in logic as a science. Like every materialist Feuerbach fought the dualist opposing of thought to being as the initial principle of philosophy. Historically things developed in such a way that Feuerbach was the first person in Germany to speak about the ‘costs of production’ of Hegelian idealism. Let us now touch on the historically inevitable ‘costs of production’ connected with the idealism of Hegel’s conception of thought.6 : Feuerbach — Once More about the Principle of Constructing a Logic: Idealism or Materialism? So far we have spoken almost exclusively about Hegel’s positive gains. In the course of his reasoning. has to be 294 by developing materialist
. therefore. and on the defects in his logic that do not permit us to adopt his conception in toto. This line of polemic. he naturally reproduced Spinoza’s decisive arguments against Cartesian dualism. and that can only be surmounted philosophy. it is true.

formal. ‘The Hegelian philosophy is the abolition of the contradiction of thought and being as Kant in particular expressed it. in the form of idealistic monism. within one element. to show that the surmounting of dualism in this case inevitably remained fictitious. the so-called philosophy of absolute identity was a philosophy of the identity of thinking in itself. i. Schelling. but. as before there was an unfilled gap between thought and being outside thought. system. and verbal and that idealism in general did not. mark you.’ As a matter of fact..e. since Feuerbach had in mind not only dualism in the pure form in which it was expressed by Kant. Feuerbach strove. and could not. the attempts systematically made to overcome dualism ‘from the right’. only its abolition . and Hegel. but also the philosophy of Fichte. he In Schelling and Hegel.deduced by analysis. within thought. the primarily considered
unsurmounted Kant. however. encroach on the fundamental premises of the Kantian therefore. The problem seemed to be
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.

because ‘being as such’ free independent selfsufficient being existing outside and independently of thought had simply not been taken into account in it. and remained something wholly immaterial and undetermined. we thought the surrounding world as and how we thought it. profoundly thought-out construction of the Hegelian philosophy. and material.resolved only because conceivable being. organised in itself and formed
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. The fundamental principle of Kantian dualism thus remained untouched. The thinking mind was considered from the very outset as something absolutely opposed to everything sensuous. had been put everywhere in the place of real being. there was hidden as a matter of fact an empty tautology.e. being in the form in which it had already been expressed in thought. corporeal. So the philosophy of Schelling and Hegel had not. as a special immaterial being. Under the grandiose. i. established any identity of thought and being and not just an ‘absolute’ one. in fact. therefore.

were represented as something passive and amorphous in themselves. that nature and man. which was then forced to enter into special relations of ‘mediation’ from outside with nature and man so as to shape them in its own image and likeness. as the object and material of its moulding activity. Only as a result of the moulding activity of the thinking spirit did nature and man become what they were and acquire all their well-known. concrete forms. Such a presentation of the thinking mind of necessity presupposed. in addition. or spirit. to return the same
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. as the product of the activity of the spirit. Hegel’s Logic also represented thought as the activity of such a supernatural and extraphysical subject. nothing other was represented in fact. Moreover.by immanent logical laws and schemas as something independent and self-sufficient. in the guise of a ‘gift of God’. and the whole complicated magic of mediation once more merely served. than the empirically obvious state of affairs in the real world. as the ‘opposites’ of the mind.

Feuerbach above all saw a scholastically refurbished. Without this preliminary ‘robbery’ of man and nature the spiritualistic philosophy could not have attributed a single one of its very impoverished determinations to the thinking spirit. Proceeding from that quite correct understanding (in general and on the whole) of the root errors of Hegelian idealism (and thereby of idealism in general. creature. like the Biblical God. thinking The absolute out thinking of spirit of spiritualism. In this interpretation of the problem of the relation of thought and being. since the Hegelian system
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. was a fantastic constructed about determinations logic was alienated from man by an act of abstraction.determinations to man and nature that had been previously taken from them by the act of abstraction. human thought. but abstracted from man and counterposed to him as the activity of a special being existing outside him. ‘rationalised’ theology. The which Hegelian concerned was. in fact.

i. Being included not only stones. but also the thinking body of man. not as an abstract. to ask how ‘thought in general’ was related to ‘Being in general’. and that meant to deprive being of one of its most important ‘predicates’. however.was the most consistent expression of the idealist point of view). was its developed interpretation. and stars. since that already presupposed that thought (in its form alienated from man) was looked upon as something independent contrasted with being from outside. logical category. to represent being as something deprived of thought meant to represent it incorrectly. from it in advance. not as being in thought.e. its translation into the
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. already included thought. to think of it ‘imperfectly’. The argument given here repeated the course of Spinoza’s thought. trees. but as the real. Thus. to exclude man. understood not in Hegel’s way. he showed. It was impossible. But being. Feuerbach rethought the very posing of the problem of the relation of thought to being. capable of thinking. sensuously objective world of nature and man.

not of the eternity or temporality of matter but of the eternity or temporality of man. sensuous. and to fixing it and considering it from the very beginning as something independent. Materialism. and physiology. for it was a matter here. medicine. be distinguished from man as a material. Feuerbach considered the decisive argument in favour of materialism to be the arguments of natural science. in the final count. relying on medicine. in contrast to everything corporeal. but of the divisibility or non-divisibility of man. in general. The whole problem thus boiled down to resolving whether thought could. not of matter scattered and
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. not of the being or not-being of God but of the being or not-being of man. sensuously objective creature. not of the divisibility or non-divisibility of matter. was also ‘Archimedes’ fulcrum in the dispute between materialism and spiritualism. and material. or whether thought should be understood as a property (‘predicate’) inseparable from man.language of a more modern philosophical terminology.

Thought was the real function of the living brain. resolved in favour of materialism. only of the head of man. and so. because there simply was no ‘one’ and ‘the other’ here. but only one and the same thing. expressed in philosophical categories.extended outside man in heaven and earth but of matter concentrated in the human skull. put on a firm footing of fact. and real thought was the being of the living brain. In short. If we had brain matter in mind. then it was quite ridiculous in general to ask how thought was ‘linked’ with it. how the one was connected with the other and ‘mediated’ it. in this dispute. it is a matter. so long as it is not conducted in mad confusion. It alone is both the source and the goal and end of this dispute’. revealed ‘the immediate unity of soul
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. naturally. and only thus. and was inseparable from the matter of the brain. That fact. the real being of the living brain was also thought. [from feuerbach’s On Spiritualism and Materialism] Feuerbach considered that the basic problem of philosophy was thus.

e. must proceed in the opposite way. The materialist. Feuerbach affirmed. He reproached them with thus having tried to stick together a picture of the real fact from two equally false abstractions. i. but only for having tried to depict it as the final unity of opposites. is consequently the point where matter thinks and the body is mind. must also (according to Feuerbach) constitute an axiom of true philosophy. taking as his
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. and conversely the mind is body and thought is matter’. a fact not requiring scholastic proof and ‘mediation’. and leaves no room for distinction or even contrast between material and immaterial being. Feuerbach did not reproach Schelling and Hegel at all for having recognised in general the unity (‘identity’) of thought and being in the thinking man. which admits of nothing in the middle between them. The ‘identity’ of thought and being. of proceeding from illusion to fact and from abstraction to reality. as the product of the joining together of an insubstantial thinking spirit and unthinking flesh.and body. so understood.

sensuous organ as all of man’s other organs. precisely because the thinking brain was the same sort of material. a fact existing only in the head of the human individual.starting point the directly given fact. The materialist must proceed from the factual direct unity (indivisibility) of the human individual in order to understand and show how and why the illusion of an imaginary opposition of thinking and corporeal being arose in the head of this individual. was consequently a purely subjective fact. That was the false path of spiritualism. a purely psychological fact. Schelling and Hegel started from the thesis of the initial opposition of incorporeal thought and of flesh without thought in order ultimately to reach the unity of the opposites. i. in order to explain the origin of those false abstractions that idealists uncritically accepted as facts. It arose for a quite natural reason. The illusion of the opposition of the thinking spirit and the flesh in general.e.
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.

in thinking. As structures they became objects only for physiology and anatomy. and conversely.e. then quite understandably I could not at the same time see the eye itself. And it was quite natural that ‘the organ gets lost. I would have to turn my gaze away from the stars.e. Vision would be impossible in general if I were to see all the detail of the structure of the eye itself at the same time as the object. and forgets
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. i. so as to think not about itself but about the other. the material structures and processes themselves by means of which thinking took place in the body of the brain. the organ of vision.The position was the same as with the eye. even in a mirror. i. As the organ of thought the brain was structurally a functionally adapted exactly so as to perform activity directed toward external objects. too. In the same way. the organic foundation and conditions of thought became objects of its consciousness . ‘the brain could not think if. If I saw stars by means of the eye. about the objective. all the inner material conditions by means of which this vision was effected. if I wanted to examine the eye.

from thought. in spite of the inevitable illusions. mental activity. subjective.and disavows itself in the opus fervet (the work heat) of its own activity. thinking brain was an ‘object’ in which there proved to be directly identical oppositions. in essence. But the illusion is understandably no argument in favour of idealism. in itself or objectively is a material. thought always remained the material activity of a material organ.’ ‘In the brain-act. is a purely mental. or subjectively. the activity in its objects’. and involuntary. objective material activity are identical and indistinguishable. immaterial.’ Thus the logic of the struggle against dualism and spiritualism directly forced Feuerbach. Of itself. thought and sensuously objective being. Hence. as the highest act. thinking and
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. arose the illusion of the complete independence of everything corporeal. unsensuous act. including the brain. arbitrary. sensuous act. to express a dialectical proposition to recognise that the living. ‘What for me. too. and sensuous. material. a material process. namely.

it is true.what was thought. It was just because thinking was a material process. the material activity of a material organ directed to material objects. with things outside thought. often wavered. which everybody did at every step without the aid of the mediating activity of God or an absolute
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. and collated with ‘things in themselves’. the spiritual and the material. compared. Not having mastered dialectics in its general form. that the products of that activity (thoughts) could be correlated. of opposing categories. supplement. but the essence remained the same. the subjective and the objective. the ideal and the real. as a result his exposition was made rather nebulous and ambiguous. Feuerbach. constantly admitting determinations that he was then forced to correct. i. identity. The thinking brain was the special ‘object’ that could be properly expressed in philosophical categories only through directly identifying mutually exclusive determinations. through a thesis that embraced a direct unity. and make specific.e.

and sensuously contemplated. of the surrounding. the same individual who really lived and existed as a sensuously objective creature.spirit. corresponded to the unity (indivisibility) of this subject Just as a thinking and sensuously contemplating person was one and the same person and not two different beings coordinating their inter-relations with the help of God or the absolute spirit. resorting to the aid of a divine principle. or mediation. and not two different worlds between which one had to look for a special passage or bridge. so the world thought of. sensuously objective world. The unity (indivisibility) of the object. on the other hand. were again one and the same world (namely the real one). That was why determinations of the world in thought (logical determinations) were directly
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. on the one hand. and one and the same subject thought about and sensuously perceived the surrounding world. Concepts and images existed in the same space and in the same time as real things. and that subject was precisely the human individual.

and
spontaneously
determinations
of
the
sensuously contemplated or intuited world. because logic and metaphysics were spontaneously and directly one and the same. but the science of the laws of both thought and intuition (contemplation) had to do with one and the same
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. categories) were nothing else than the expression of the abstract. The question of the relation of logical and metaphysics was also an illusory and sham question. to the world in intuition and representation. And if by logic was understood not a collection of rules for the expression of thought in speech. The universal determinations of the world in thought (logical determinations. There was no such relation. And it was absurd to ask what was the special relation of the system of logical determinations to the sensuously given world. A logical system was nothing else than the expression of the determinateness of the sensuously contemplated or intuited world. because real world. universal determinateness of things given in intuition.

the whole and the parts. then.development of real thinking. The so-called logical forms are only abstract.’ Thus Feuerbach agreed completely with Hegel on logical forms and laws being absolutely
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. derived. but speech is not thought. and particularity. singularity. They presuppose the metaphysical concepts of universality. ‘The so-called logical forms of judgments and conclusions are therefore not active thoughtforms. universal forms of the real content of thought. but the abstract. necessity. foundation and consequence.e. Only thought-forms.
metaphysical conditions or relations are logical ones only metaphysics as the science of categories is the true esoteric logic that was Hegel’s profound thought. not causal conditions of reason. of the real world sensuously given to man. i. they not are original consequently arbitrary. elementary speech-forms. they are given only through these concepts. similarly. otherwise the greatest chatter-box would be the greatest thinker. by logical forms must be understood not the abstract forms of sentences and expressions.

Since Feuerbach later began a specifically of general anthropological concretisation
materialist truths. but only. of the real world sensuously given to man. in the most general form.identical with metaphysical ones. although he understood the reason and the grounds for that circumstance quite differently from the idealist Hegel. That is the reason why Neokantians like Bernstein called consistent materialism spiritualism inside out. including the Marxist. Nevertheless Feuerbach’s interpretation of the identity of thought and being remains true and indisputable for any materialist. From the materialist point of view it states that logical forms and patterns are nothing else than realised universal forms and patterns of being. Here we have a clearly expressed materialist interpretation of the principle of the identity of the laws and forms of thought and being. arguments developed in his
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. so long as we are concerned with the fundamentals of logic and the theory of knowledge. of course. and not with the details of the knowledge built up on that foundation.

the activity of the thinking body in real space and time. The materialism appeared. furthermore. positivists. Feuerbach’s
finally. and sensuously materialism.exposition that were obviously weak not only in comparison with the Marxist-Leninist solution of the problem. and even Neokantians occasion to consider him their predecessor and their though not completely consistent ally. The materialism consisted in this case in an unqualified recognition of the fact that thought was the mode of the real existence of the material body. and (2) because it was materialism without dialectics. and they subsequently gave vulgar materialists. was expressed in man’s being recognised as the subject of thought. in recognition of the identity of the mentally perceived comprehended world. A rather more detailed analysis of the features of Feuerbach’s treatment of the identity of thinking and being is not without interest for two reasons: (1) because it was materialism. that same man who
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. but even in comparison with Spinoza’s conception.

overcoming the ‘resistance’ of the external world. namely that man (the thinking body) did not move along ready-made forms and contours presented by nature but actively created new forms.lived in the real world. All those are fundamental tenets of materialism in general. and on the whole. and primarily incomprehension of the role of practical activity as activity altering nature. What then were the weaknesses of Feuerbach’s position? In general. a point that Fichte made against him (and so in general against the whole form of materialism represented by him). For even Spinoza had in mind only the movement of the thinking body along the given contours of natural bodies and lost sight of this moment. not inherent in nature. and moved along them. contemplating and comprehending it ‘from outside’.
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. and not a special being hovering outside the world. they were the same as those of all preMarxian materialism. and consequently also of dialectical materialism.

’ Hence it followed that man (the subject of cognition) was considered the passive side of the object-subject relation. man was abstracted here from the combinations of social relations and transformed into an isolated individual.‘The chief defect of all materialism up to now (including Feuerbach’s) is that the object. what we apprehend through our senses. as the determined member of this inter-relation. Furthermore. Hence in opposition to materialism the active side was developed abstractly by idealism which of course does not know real sensuous activity as such. not subjectively. to everything that lay outside the individual brain and existed
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. is understood only in the form of the subject or contemplation. really distinguished from the objects of thought: but he does not understand human activity itself as objective activity. as practice. The man-environment relations were therefore interpreted as the relations of the individual to all the rest. but not as sensuous human activity. reality. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects.

not only did nature by itself (‘in itself’) lie outside the individual but also humanised nature. That was the root of all his weaknesses. in the individual’s contemplation. In other words. But outside the individual. and independently of his will and consciousness. the world of things created by man’s labour. altered by labour. When. because in contemplation there was given the individual the product of the activity of other individuals interacting among themselves in the process of producing material life. For Feuerbach the surrounding world or environment given in intuition or contemplation was taken as the starting point. and the system of relations between man and man.independently of it. developed in the labour process. and
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. and its premises were not investigated. since it was the individual that he always had in mind. he faced the problem of where and how man (the thinking body) was in immediate union (contact) with the environment. he answered: in intuition. there existed not only nature but also the social historical environment. therefore.

those properties and forms of nature that had already been transformed into the properties and forms of the activity of man. does not exist for Feuerbach’. 7: A Contribution to the Problem of a Dialectical Materialistic Critique of Objective Idealism
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. because this ‘nature. as a matter of fact.e. nor the nature which to-day no longer exists anywhere (except perhaps on a few Australian coral-islands of recent origin) and which. science) than a certain modification of religious illusions. He therefore saw nothing in the thought idolised by Hegel (i. The ‘nature as such’ that Feuerbach wished to ‘contemplate’ did not. from the division of labour that ‘alienated’ thought (in the form of science) from the majority of individuals and converted it into a force existing independently of them and outside them. its object and its product. lie within his field of view. therefore. the nature that preceded human activity. Feuerbach’s attention was also diverted from the real complexities of the social relations between theory and practice. is not by any means the nature in which Feuerbach lives.

it is necessary to understand them. or rather defects. Marx. and the illusions. whose power it was incapable of overcoming despite all the strength of its creator’s mind. of any philosophical system. with exceptional clarity. like his limitations. within the limits of the premises that idealism imposed on scientific thinking. and thereby went much further in matters of logic than either Hegel or his materialist antipode Feuerbach. was due on the whole to his having exhausted the possibilities of developing dialectics on the basis of idealism.In order to overcome the weaknesses. Hegel showed. Irrespective of his intentions. Engels. that idealism led thinking up a blind alley and doomed even dialectically enlightened thought to
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. Hegel’s greatness. the clearly drawn boundary across which the Hegelian dialectic could not step. Marx demonstrated this sort of ‘understanding’ in relation to Hegel. and Lenin showed both the historical historically contribution conditioned of Hegel and of the his limitations
scientific advances.

who thereby disclosed the secret of every other. the world of nature and history existing outside thought and independently of it. As the young Marx remarked. For Hegel. i. inconsistent and incomplete idealism) ‘being’. With such an approach both a boiling teakettle and the Great French Revolution were only
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. Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law] off from Hegel. to an endless procedure of ‘self-expression’ and ‘selfconsciousness’. was inevitably transformed demonstrating into the a mere pretext art. (precisely because he was a most consistent and unhypocritical idealist. and therefore both the Prussian monarch and the louse on the monarch’s head could equally well serve the idealist dialectician as ‘examples’ illustrating the category ‘real individuality in and for itself’.hopeless circling within itself. into for an logical
inexhaustible reservoir of ‘examples’ confirming over and over again the same schemas and categories of logic. ‘the matter of logic’ (die Sache der Logik) fenced the ‘logic of the matter’ (die Logik der Sache) [Marx.e.

into one of the necessary dialectical stages of its self-differentiation. The profound flaws in the Hegelian dialectic were directly linked with idealism. secondary and created. It is therefore necessary to look into all these circumstances more closely. due to which the dialectic was readily transformed into ingenious.‘examples’
illustrating
the
relation
of
the
categories of quality and quantity. in accordance with which the act of ‘divine creation of the world and man’ had occurred. however fortuitous it might be in itself. logically subtle apologies for everything that existed. Hegel actually counterposed man and his real thought to impersonal. was thereby converted into an external embodiment of absolute reason. featureless — ‘absolute’ — thought as some force existing for ages. in relation to which the real world and real human thought proved to be something essentially derivative. but any empirical reality impinging on the eye. He also understood logic as ‘absolute form’.
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.

did not at all express an idea simply taken uncritically by Hegel from religion. into some supernatural force existing outside man and dominating him. The fact is that the Hegelian conception of thought represented an uncritical description of the real position of things formed on the soil of a narrowly professional form of the division of social labour. but a much more profound and serious circumstance. and it was the specifically Hegelian objective idealism that converted thought into some new god. from immediately sensuously objective
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. or a simple atavism of religious consciousness. Under the spontaneously developing division of social labour there arose of necessity a peculiar inversion of the real relations between human individuals and their collective forces and work from practical. This specifically Hegelian illusion. on the division of mental activity. the idealism of Hegel’s conception of thinking was revealed. that is to say. however.In that. as Feuerbach suggested. physical labour. too.

traditions. and not at all simply in the fantasies of religiously minded people and idealist philosophers. to be the subject. of this or that universal faculty (active power). an inversion known in philosophy as estrangement or alienation. into a ‘speaking tool’ of alienated universally human forces and faculties. means of activity personified
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. in social reality. Here. appeared as the subject. and of a kind of caste with its own special rituals. universal (collectively realised) modes of action were organised as special social institutions. language. and other ‘immanent’ structures of a quite impersonal and featureless character. the separate human individual did not prove to be the bearer. As a result. i.e. but.e. established in the form of trades and professions. which was becoming more and more estranged from him. i. the universal (social) means of the activity.collectively developed faculties. dictating the means and forms of his occupation to each individual from outside. this active power. on the contrary. The individual as such was thus transformed into a kind of slave.

in the name of the Concept. within the community of scholars). The same fate also befell thought. The scientist. became a special occupation. and how they must do it. and in that form was really opposed to the majority of human beings and not simply opposed to them but also dictating to them what they must do from the standpoint of science. the professional theoretician. thought achieved the heights and levels of development needed for society as a whole only in the sphere of science (i. appearing before other people as its trusted representative and plenipotentiary. and what and how they must think.Science. impersonal power. and so on. It. etc. etc.e. of professionals in mental. in the name of an absolutely universal. too. the lot for life of professional scholars. and further as the state..
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. Given universal alienation. personally. collective. law.as money and capital. religion. Science is thought transformed in certain conditions into a special profession. lays down the law to them not in his own name. but in the name of . theoretical work.

It does not distinguish itself from it. of the selfconsciousness of alienated thought. as a special object. there arose all the specific illusions of the professionals of mental.
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. It will readily be noted that Hegel. or in other words to transform the schemas of his own activity into its own object. in scholastically disguised form. and that in the course of a critique of Hegel: ‘The animal is immediately one with its life activity. He has conscious life activity. i. It is not a determination with which he directly merges’). illusions that acquired their most conscious expression precisely in the philosophy of objective idealism. It is its life activity. quite exactly expressed. too. (That is the very special feature of man which the young Marx recognised as follows.On that soil. Man makes his life-activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness. in his logic. the fundamental features of human life activity: man’s faculty (as a thinking creature) to look at himself ‘from outside’ as it were. theoretical work.e. as something ‘other’.

and the position of things (acts) located outside the individual’s consciousness and beyond his will (Dinge und Sache). upside-down representation. exclusively as moments. he registered it solely to the extent that it was already transformed into a scheme of thought. The real picture of human life activity obtained here is a topsy-turvy. into a rule in accordance with which man more or less consciously built this or that specific activity (be it in the material of language or something else). as a logical figure. into a logical schema. The special feature of human life activity described above in Marx’s words also appeared in the Hegelian representation as a scheme of thought realised by man. realised and realisable in natural. In reality man thinks because that
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.Since Hegel looked upon this feature of human life activity exclusively through the eyes of logic. physical material. including in that also the organic body of man himself. as metamorphoses of thought (subjective activity). He therefore registered things.

is his real life activity. outside of. naturally. This is only natural because the logician who specially studied thought was no longer interested in things (or the position of things) as such. So Hegel was ‘guilty’ of remaining a ‘pure’ logician just there where the standpoint of logic was inadequate. they appeared as a result of the activity of a thinking being. as the product of thought understood as an activity. and appeared as the result of thought. and through it the position of things outside man’s head. of the subject. as a reality existing before. This peculiar professional
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. the specific product of which was the concept. Hegel said the contrary. economist or astronomer did). and independently of man and his activity (the logician did not look on reality at all as the physicist or biologist. but in things as. that real human life activity was such because man thought in accordance with a definite schema. and as what. were only fixed here insofar as they were ‘posited by thought’. All determinations of human life activity.

however. and in those characteristics.e. or some aim selected in advance. the real. for the mental. theoretical work completed before and independently of practice.blindness of the logician showed up primarily in the fact that he looked upon practice. In a conception of the historical process as a whole such a point of view was understandably the purest (‘absolute’) idealism. or rather for the results of that work. Practice there was thus also understand abstractly. i. concept. because it was the act of realising a certain intention. was only illuminated from that aspect. solely as a criterion of truth. solely as the verifying authority for thought. and historical events and their consequences — were correspondingly only taken into account insofar as they embodied or objectified some idea or another. idea. not dependent on some thought. All the results of people’s practical activity — things made by human labour. As regards logic. was absolutely not analysed as such in a determination of its own. the science
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. sensuously objective activity of man. which it owed in fact to thought. plan.

e. can we reproach the logician for abstracting everything in the most rigorous fashion that had nothing to do with the subject matter of his investigation. In fact. concealed quite another meaning. the logic of any other concrete sphere of human activity) would be as stupid as to reproach the chemist for excessive attention to the ‘matter of chemistry’. i. of thought? To reproach the professional logician for the fact that the ‘matter of logic’ concerned him more than the ‘logic of the matter’.of thought. But Marx’s words above.e. of the subject matter of his science. of his subject matter. it was not only justified but was the sole rational position. and for paying attention to any fact only insofar as it could be understood as the consequence. as the form of disclosure. directed at Hegel. (i. The fault of the narrow professional was not at all his rigorous limitation of thought to the framework of the subject matter of his science. but his incapacity to see clearly the boundaries of
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.

most cherished. But it was the work of a moment. the typical professional logician. As a logician he was right to look upon a statement or a fact exclusively from the standpoint of the abstract schemas of thought revealed in it. and most important truth accessible in general to man and to humanity was allegedly discovered. which Marx called his ‘false positivism’. when the logic of any matter interested him only insofar as it was revealed in it in general. The mysticism of Hegel’s logic. and at the same time its insidious feature. began where the special standpoint of the logician ex professo was adopted and distinguished from the sole scientific standpoint from the heights of which only the ‘ultimate’. As a logician Hegel was quite right in looking on any phenomenon in the development of human culture as an act disclosing the power of thought. The same applied to Hegel.the competence of his science associated with this limitation of his view of things. most profound. by adding a little something to that view (admissible
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.

he lost any chance of
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. Abstractions that quite precisely expressed (described) the forms and schemas of the flow of thought in all forms of its concrete realisation were immediately and directly passed off as schemas of the process that had created the whole diversity of human culture. The exact results of a chemical investigation of the composition of the colours used to paint the Sistine Madonna would be converted into such a lie the moment the chemist looked on them as the sole scientific explanation of the unique ‘synthesis’ created by Raphael’s brush. logical abstractions were drawn was expressed just in those abstractions. for the truth to be transformed into a lie. namely that the essence of the phenomena in themselves from which the special. in which they were discovered. As a result the whole mystique of Hegel’s conception of thought was concentrated in a single point In considering all the manifold forms of human culture as a result of manifestation of the faculty to think that functions in man.and natural in logic).

if the sensuously objective activity (practice) of social man was represented as the consequence. Thought was thus transformed into the only active and creative force.e. and its schemas and rules. Hegel simply passed off the absence of a reply to this reasonable question as the only possible answer to it. appeared in man. and the external world into its field of application. Naturally. By raising thought to the rank of a divine power and force impelling man to historical creation from within. remained outside Hegel’s field of view. by persons occupied in
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. plans. seemed to him the ‘prehistory’ of thought.understanding from where in general this unique faculty. The external world therefore appeared as the initial material for producing the concept. The sensuously objective activity of the millions of people who by their labour created the body of culture. as the external objectification of ideas. and concepts created by thought (i. as something that had to be processed by means of existing concepts in order to concretise them. the self-consciousness of which is scientific thought.

as the universal creative force. it became in principle impossible to say either what was the source of thought in the head of theoreticians or how it arose. Hegel replied. this creative principle. and to ask about its origin from something else was to ask a futile question. and gradually arrived at awareness of its own activities. consequently. In the form of logic. It was. objectified. which had never arisen from anywhere. of this absolute form. In logic. and of their schemas and laws. That was the whole secret of Hegel’s objective idealism. Logic was selfconsciousness of. of this infinite creative power. Thought was. Hegel deified real
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. objective idealism means the absence of any answer whatsoever to the question from whence thought originates. In man this creative force was only revealed. defined as a system o eternal and absolute schemas of every kind of creative activity.mental work). it operated in man. and estranged so as then in logic to cognise itself as such.

declared them absolute. i. as absolute) the nevertheless real logical forms and laws of human thought discovered by him through study of human spiritual and material culture. without even allowing the problem of their origin to be posed. Its weakness was that. for all that. defined as given outside time. Hegel stopped halfway. i.e. Its strength was that he idolised (i. led to a number of absolutely unresolvable problems in logic itself.e. The fact was that idealism. and even turned
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. While making an exceptionally important advance in understanding of the logical forms of thought. he idolised the logical forms and laws of human thought.e. the view of thought as a universal faculty that was only ‘aroused’ to self-consciousness in man and did not arise in the exact and strict sense from the soil of definite conditions formed outside him and independently of him. That was at once the strength and the weakness of his conception of thought and logic.human thought and its logical forms and patterns.

of the development of the thinking spirit to selfconsciousness. he continued to consider it the principal. ‘In the beginning was the Word’ — in respect of human thought (the thinking mind of man) Hegel maintained the Biblical position unsullied. counterposed itself to everything else) precisely in the word and through the word. and therefore took
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. Nevertheless. or rather reconstruction. language) as the sole form of the ‘effective being of the spirit’. as soon as he was faced with the question of the inter-relation of sensuously perceived forms of the embodiment of the mind’s activity (thought). The thinking mind of man was first aroused (i e. of the external disclosure of the creative power of thought. most adequate form. as the faculty of ‘naming’. in which the mind (or spirit) became the object of consideration for itself. accepting it as something self-evident and making it the basic principle of all subsequent construction. the form in which thought was counterposed to itself. Thus he refused to recognise the word (speech.back.

The word also functioned as the first ‘objective reality of thought activity’. Having arisen from the ‘mind’ as a definitely articulated sound. or. This appeared clearly as follows: one ‘finite spirit’ (the thought of the individual) made itself the subject matter (object) of another. The real tool — the
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. expressing it in Hegelian language. as the initial and immediate form of being of the spirit for itself. also ‘finite’. the mode of the relation of spirit to spirit. the word on being heard was again converted into ‘spirit’. spirit in the word and through the word. both in essence and in time. into the state of the thinking mind of another person. which the thinking spirit created ‘from itself’ in order to become the object for itself (in the image of another thinking spirit). The vibrations of the ambient air (the audible word) also proved to be only the pure mediator between the two states of the spirit. The word (speech) functioned here as the first tool of the external objectification of thought. of the spirit to itself.shape primarily as the ‘kingdom of names’ and titles.

though implicit premise at its very beginning. in the course of its dialogue with itself. and contained the same. Thought. only its mode of ‘manifestation’. scraper or wooden plough — began to appear as the second and secondary. before and independently of the real moulding of nature by labour. Labour only realised what the thinking spirit had found in itself in the course of utterance. In the Phenomenology of Mind all history therefore began with an analysis of the contradiction that arose between thought (insofar as it expressed itself in the words ‘here’ and ‘now’) and all its other content not yet expressed in words. Thus Hegel saw in the word the form of the actual being of the thinking spirit in which the latter manifested its own creative force (faculty) before everything. it was suggested
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. derived tool of the same process of objectification as the sensuously objective
metamorphosis of thought.stone axe or cutting tool. The Science of Logic also suggested this schema. But in this interpretation the dialogue proved to be only a monologue of the thinking spirit.

Language has penetrated into whatever becomes for man something inner — becomes. an idea.. had realised and was realising itself primarily in and through the word. Hegel therefore also maintained the following in logic: ‘It is in human Language that the Forms of Thought are manifested and laid down in the first instance. pp 39-40]
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. In our day it cannot be too often recalled. that what distinguishes man from the beasts is the faculty of Thought. in the Science of Logic. So it was no accident that the consummation of all the ‘phenomenological’ and ‘logical’ history of the thinking spirit consisted in returning to the starting point: the thinking spirit achieved its absolutely exact and perfect representation. — and what man transforms to Language contains concealed. something which he makes his very own. or worked out to clearness — a Category..’ [Science of Logic. or mixed up with other things. that is.. naturally in the printed word — in a treatise on logic.there.

and then only really acted served as the foundation of his schema. By that step thought as an activity taking place in the head in the form. which began with the word and completed its cycle in the word. The whole world of the products of human labour and all history. and so on and so forth.That was the deepest root of Hegel’s idealism. then began to be interpreted as a process taking place ‘from the power of thought’. The idea that man thought initially. Hence also the schema ‘word — act — thing made by the act — again
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. of inner speech. The whole grandiose conception of the history of the estrangement (objectification) of the creative energy of thought and its inverse mastering of the fruits of its labour (disobjectification). both spiritual and material. including all historical events. economic. was just the history outlined in the Science of Logic. precisely. and political structures. The clue to Hegel’s conception is not so very complicated. was converted into the starting point for understanding all the phenomena of culture. social.

i.e. the accumulated mental labour of society functions in the form of Science. functions in the form of capital. the same sort of impersonal and featureless anonymous force. in a word. both began and ended at one and the same point. i. so too scientific knowledge. owing to which the movement had the form not of a circle but of a spiral each turn of which.e. The rational kernel and at the same time the mystifying feature of the schema described here are most easily considered by analogy (although it is more than a simple analogy) with the metamorphoses that political economy brings out when analysing Just as commodity-money accumulated labour circulation. but on a new basis. And further. however.word’ — (this time a verbally expressed report on what had been done). The individual professional theoretician functions as
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. in the instruments and products of labour.
concentrated in machines. there was a new cycle according to the same schema. in the form of ‘self-expanding value’. for which the individual capitalist functions as ‘executor’.

He functions as the animated tool of a process that is completed independently of his individual consciousness and his individual will. one-sided ‘embodiment’ of the universal
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. ‘thinks’.the representative of the self-developing power of knowledge. which has taken root in his head during his education. the sensuous concrete. individual man proves to be only an abstract. the same real mystification of the relations between the universal and the particular in which the abstract universal is not an aspect or property of the sensuously concrete (in this case living man) but rather the contrary. rather the Concept controls him. determining both the direction of his research and the modes and forms of his activity. He does not control the concept. His social function boils down to being the individual embodiment of the universal spiritual wealth accumulated over centuries and millennia of mental labour. the process of the increase of knowledge. He does not think here as such — Knowledge. There is the same turning upside down as in the sphere of material production based on exchange value.

is realised as such in Roman law and in German law which are concrete laws. I say: the law. it makes the expression of value difficult to understand. that is selfevident. Concept. p771] So Hegel’s idealism was not in the least the fruit of religious fantasy or of a religiously oriented imagination. This is not simply an analogy with what happens in the world of relations founded on value. is characteristic of the expression of value. At the same time. instead of the abstract and general being regarded on the contrary as a property of the concrete. ‘This inversion. only in the sphere of mental rather than material production. which is an abstraction. It was only an uncritical description of the real state of things.’ [Capital. on the other hand. If I say: Roman law and German law are both law. by which the sensibly concrete is regarded as a form of manifestation of the abstract and general. on the soil
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. If. Science).(in this case Knowledge. the connection between the abstract and the concrete becomes mystical. Vol I. but the same social process.

The forms of his philosophy were the practically inevitable illusions (even practically useful) that he inevitably created in his own work. the narrow specialist of mental labour. and reflected its position. expressed by the formula C — M — C. as we know. i. operated (thought).of which the professional theoretician.e. its specific goal.e. i. But at a certain point in the self-
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. as the ‘metamorphosis of the commodity’. which was for him the beginning (starting point) of his specific activity. and the end. The pattern of commodity-money circulation is. The commodity (C) appears in it as both the beginning and the end of the cycle. and money (M) as its mediating link. But the analogy we have used enables us also to understands another circumstance. the mechanism itself of the ‘inversion’ or ‘turning upside down’ described above. in the form of verbal-sign expressions. its real ‘entelechy’. illusions that were fed by the objective position of that work in society. It was the knowledge acquired by him as concepts immediately in the course of his education.

and in the form of the latter acquires ‘the occult quality of being able to add value to itself’ and ‘suddenly presents itself as substance endowed with an independent motion of its own.closing cyclical movement C — M — C — M — C — M. money ceases to be a simple ‘intermediary’. acquires the former role of money. In the formula M — C — M’ value appears as an ‘automatically operating subject’. the means of circulation of the mass of commodities and suddenly discloses an enigmatic faculty for ‘self-expansion’.. Money. is also capital. the role of intermediary and means of the transient metamorphosis of money. as the ‘substance-subject’ of the whole cyclic movement. The Commodity. and so on. the real starting point of the process as a whole.. a substance of which commodities and money are themselves merely forms’. in which the latter is embodied in order to complete the act of ‘selfexpansion’. Schematically this phenomenon is expressed in the formula as follows: M — C — M’. having acquired so mysterious a property. constantly returning to its starting
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.

analogous to the idea of value. because the concept is also accumulated knowledge. Hegel recorded the same situation. In his Science of Logic. so that the original value spontaneously expands’ [Capital Vol I] and this happens ‘in itself’. of thought. while continually assuming by turns the form of money and the form of commodities. ‘value is here the active factor in a process in which. which takes as the starting point of its explanation an exactly
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. Thus we are dealing not with the abstract fantasies of an idealist but with the same uncritical description of the real process of the production and accumulation of knowledge as the theory of political economy. only not in regard to value but to knowledge (understanding. the idea of knowledge. which always appears in science in the form of the word. gives birth to surplus value. as a subject-substance. so to say. In fact he dealt with the process of accumulation of knowledge. truth).point. Hence. as a self-expanding substance. the ‘constant capital’. it at the same time changes in magnitude. too.

In disclosing the secret of the selfexpansion of value. discloses a mysterious.recorded but not understood fact. as the starting point and goal of the whole cyclical process of coming back ‘to itself’. left unexplained. The fact is that the idealist illusion created by Hegel the logician had the same nature as the practically necessary (‘practically true’) illusions that entrap the mind of man caught up in the process of the creation and accumulation of surplus value. appearing as the form of movement of capital. and of Hegel’s conception of thought. the secret of the production and accumulation of surplus value. ‘The fact is that money. becomes mysterious and occult.e. i. which is not understood by him and takes place
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. occult faculty for selfexpansion and self-development. but deliberately and consciously) the whole terminology of Hegelian logic given above. in Capital Marx employed (and not by chance. and a property is ascribed to it that in fact belongs to quite another process that is expressed (‘reflected’) in its form. This fact.

‘the subject substance of all its changes’. and therefore the formal goal of his special activity. with its occult properties. For him. Something analogous also happens with the professional theoretician. with the person who represents ‘personified’ knowledge. also appears simultaneously as the starting point and as the goal of his special work. originally. From where this sum of money arose.
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. naturally.independently of his consciousness and will. may have no special interest for him. The logical and socio-historical patterns of the origin of these illusions were objectively and subjectively the same. ‘an automatically operating subject’. the knowledge accumulated by humanity. sign form. and recorded moreover in verbal. For the capitalist a certain sum of money (a certain value indispensably expressed in money form) is the starting point of all his further activity as a capitalist. the concept. and how. From his point of view. the concept makes itself out to be a ‘self-developing substance’. science. and of all its metamorphoses.

from the real form of the life activity of the professional theoretician there also grow all the practically necessary illusions about thought and concept that were systematically expressed in Hegel’s Science of Logic. as the transformation of already as its theoretical knowledge. but took place as the perfecting of already existing concepts. which never began. The Hegelian logic described the system of the objective forms of thought within the limits of which revolved the process of extended reproduction of the concept. growing knowledge drew by turns into its living circulation were recorded. since it was a matter of extending the sphere of the cognised. in its developed forms. If the separate forms of the manifestation that expanding. The concept was always already presupposed here in the form of a jumping-off point for new conquests.
accumulated
‘increment’. the following definitions would be obtained: science (accumulated knowledge) is words (the ‘language
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. ‘from the very beginning’.Hence. and in that the initial concepts played a most active role.

self-development. logical forms (the real forms of the production of knowledge) began therefore to appear here as forms of the ‘selfdevelopment’ of knowledge. being accepted
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. It has acquired the occult faculty of creating knowledge by virtue of the fact that it is itself knowledge.of science’). science is the things created on the basis of knowledge. here. and ‘self-develops’. throws off as surplus (added) knowledge from itself as the initial knowledge. Knowledge becomes the subject of a certain process in which. The mystification consisted in the pattern or scheme that expressed the features of the activity of the professional theoretician. while constantly changing its verbal form into an objective material one it alters its magnitude and its scale. For the movement in which knowledge unites new knowledge to itself is its own movement. and its expansion is consequently self-expansion.e. i. materialised force of knowledge. the objectified. self-intensification. and so were mystified. By analogy with the production and accumulation of surplus value.

and passed off as the pattern of development of knowledge in general. the secret of the birth of value was unresolvable in principle. in analysing which Marx stressed that his investigation did not begin with an analysis of value. The same thing took place with the concept of thought in the Hegelian scheme. in which by
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. we see. So. in money form. because it was the analysis of a commodity that bared the secret of the birth and origin of value. From the logical standpoint that is most important in principle. Hegel recorded those features that were actually realised in the process of thought in its developed form. it was the same mystification as in political economy. in the form of science. as a special (isolated) sphere of the division of social labour. and then also the secret of its manifestation in money. and the formula that there quite accurately reflected the surface of the process appeared as follows: word — act — word (W — A — W). but with analysis of a commodity. In the contrary case.

in the form of formulae. No other philosophical system since Hegel has been able to handle it as a ‘tool of criticism’. etc. active faculties of man from the majority of individuals.e.
is
understood
verbally
recorded
knowledge. proved only to be within the power of Marx and Engels. since not one of them has adopted the standpoint of a revolutionary. blueprints.e. etc. to the situation of the estrangement (alienation) of the real. the active faculties of social man. critical attitude to the objective conditions that feed the illusions of idealism. knowledge in its universal form. diagrams. i.. as forces monopolised by more
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. symbols. appear as forces independent of the majority of individuals and dominating them as external necessity.‘word’. A really critical mastering of Hegel’s logic. in the form of the ‘language of science’. i. the situation in which all the universal (social) forces. models of all kinds. carefully preserving all its positive features and purging it of mystic worship of ‘pure thought’ and the ‘divine concept’.

Only along that path could the objective-idealist illusions of Hegel’s conception be really explained. i. critical mastering of Hegel’s conception of thought lay through a revolutionary. The sole path to a real.or less narrow groups. and not simply attacked by such biting epithets (that equally explained nothing) as ‘mystical nonsense’. strata. and others of that kind.
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.e. to the world of commoditycapitalist relations. ‘theological atavism’. and classes of society. critical attitude to the world of alienation.

to a clear understanding of the fact that all dialectical schemas and categories revealed in thought by Hegel were universal forms and laws. and when it was expressed in the terms of his philosophy it appeared approximately as follows. of the development of the external real world existing outside of and independently of thought. for them. nor even the brain. of the logic of the development of the materialist world outlook. The Ego did not think. Man thought by means of his brain and. This movement was seen as a direct continuation of Feuerbach’s argumentation. reflected in the collective consciousness of man. along the road to materialism.
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.8: The Materialist Conception of Thought as the Subject Matter of Logic After what Hegel had done it was only possible to advance in a single direction. nor Reason. and the materialistically rethought dialectic fulfilled the role. Marx and Engels had already begun a materialist rethinking of the Hegelian dialectic at the beginning of the 1840s.

too. found himself in human unity with it). reached its full stature. i. reflection of the external world in the forms of man’s activity. The ideal is not an individual. psychological fact. Thus it was along the path of development of logic that the problem of the nature of human thought.moreover in unity and contact with nature. Man only thought when he was in unity with society. did not think in immediate unity with. man. but a socio-historical one. with the social and historical collective that produced his material and spiritual life.e.e. But. continued Marx. in the forms of his consciousness and will. nature. much less a physiological fact. the
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. The ideal is the subjective image of objective reality. That was where Feuerbach left it. Abstracted. from the nexus of the social relations within and through which he effected his human contact with nature (i. Abstracted from that unity he no longer thought. he thought as little as a brain isolated from the human body. the problem of the ideal.

This general materialist conception of the nature of the ideal. as an attribute. as the reflection of a material body in another material body.e. which constituted the essence of the line of Democritus-Spinoza-Diderot-Feuerbach. irrespective of variants of its concretisation by individual materialists. of specially organised matter. i. also served as the starting
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.’ All the diverse forms of resolving the problem of the ideal in the history of philosophy are attracted to two poles — the materialist and the idealist. ‘the ideal is nothing other than the material when it has been transposed and translated inside the human head. In Marx’s description. Pre-Marxian materialism. It exists in a variety of forms of man’s social consciousness and will as the subject of the social production of material and spiritual life.product and form of mental production. while justly rejecting spiritualist and dualist ideas of the ideal as a special substance counterposed to the material world. considered the ideal as an image. a function.

it could not understand man in all his peculiarities as a product of labour transforming both the external world and man himself. The weak sides of the pre-Marxian materialism. neuro-physiological structures of the brain and their functions. the result and active function of labour. of the sensuously objective activity of social man. and acquired independent form in the middle of the nineteenth century as so-called vulgar materialism (Büchner. Vogt. The old materialism set out from a conception of man as part of nature but. were linked with an unhistorical. which appeared as a trend among French materialists (especially in Cabanis and La Mettrie) and later in Feuerbach. By virtue of that the ideal could not be understood as. Moleschott. as the image of the external
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.point for the Marxist-Leninist solution of the problem. and others). and ultimately naturalistic to direct conception of the nature of man and led to a rapprochement identification of the ideal with the material. anthropological. not bringing materialism as far as history.

and was emphasised by them in an abstract. and more broadly the conversion in general of the universal products of social production (both material and spiritual) into a special social force opposed to individuals and dominating their wills and minds.world arising in the thinking body not in the form of the result of passive contemplation but as the product and form of active transformation of nature by the labour of generations succeeding one another in the course of historical development. The main fact on which the classic systems of objective idealism had grown up was the independence of the aggregate social culture and its forms of organisation from the individual. as Lenin put it. by ‘clever’ idealism. i. by the line of Plato-FichteHegel. The main transformation that Marx and Engels effected in the materialist conception of the nature of the ideal therefore related primarily to the active aspect of the relation of thinking man to nature.e the aspect that had been mainly developed. It was for that reason that ‘the
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. one-sided. idealist way.

since their co-operation is not voluntary but natural. and further. appears to these individuals. The power of the social whole over individuals was directly disclosed and functioned in the form of the state and the political system of society. logical and other standards and criteria.social power. are ignorant. nay even being the prime governor of these’. ethical. not as their own united power but as an alien force existing outside them.e. which they thus cannot control. in the form of a system of moral. and legal limitations and norms of social behaviour. the multiplied productive force. which on the contrary passes through a peculiar series of phases and stages independent of the will and the action of man. The individual was forced from childhood to reckon much more seriously with the requirements and limitations expressed and socially sanctioned in them than with the immediately perceived external appearance of
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. which arises through the co-operation of different individuals as it is determined within the division of labour. of aesthetic. of the origin and end of which they. i.

. forms of capital and social forms of intercourse. or the organically inherent desires.single things and situations. neither sprang from universal schemas of the work of thought nor arose from an act of passive contemplation of nature unsullied by man.e. objective transformation by man. is the real basis of what the philosophers have conceived as "substance" and "essence of man". without exception. and
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.. The social whole was also mystified in the ‘fundamental’ principles of objective idealism. but took shape in the course of its practical. by society. Marx and Engels wrote: ‘This sum of productive forces. i. however. moreover. General images. as forms of real activity. were crystallised in the body of spiritual culture quite unintentionally. and needs of his own body. Exposing the earthly basis of idealist illusions. and what they have identified and attacked. They arose and functioned as forms of the social-man determination of the purposive will of the individual.. which every individual and generation finds in existence as something given.’ All general images. inclinations.

In intuition they appeared precisely as the forms of things created by human activity. People were only concerned with nature as such to the extent that it was involved in one way or another in the process of social labour. compass. physical material by man’s activities. into a ‘tool’ of the life activity of the organism of social man. into his natural clock. although through their activities. and calendar. became the object of man’s attention and contemplation when they were transformed by society into a means of orientation in time and space.independently of the will and consciousness of individuals. into an ‘organ’ of his body. Even the starry heavens. a condition of active human practice. was transformed into material. into a means. The universal forms and patterns of natural material really showed through and were realised just to the extent to which this material had already been transformed
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. or as ‘stamps’ (‘imprints’) laid on natural. in which human labour still could not really alter anything. as forms of purposive will alienated in external substance.

When. we spoke of the material system. of a quite objective. The ideal thus did not boil down to the state of matter found in the cranium of the individual. The ideal existed immediately only as the form (mode. material being). directed to the external world. the brain. Between contemplating and thinking man and nature in itself there existed a very important mediating link through which nature was transformed into thought. accomplished in forms created by preceding development.e. and thought into the
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. image) of the activity of social man (i.e. of which the ideal was the function and mode of existence. that system was only social man in unity with the objective world through which he exercised his specifically human life activity. It was the special function of man as the subject of social labour activity. of the objective body of civilisation and so the universal forms of ‘things in themselves’ appeared to man immediately as active forms of the functioning of his ‘inorganic body’.into building material of the ‘inorganic body of man’. therefore. i.

aesthetically developed contemplation. It was production (in the broadest sense of the word) that transformed the object of nature into the object of contemplation and thought. Feuerbach also stopped at the standpoint of contemplation (intuition) of nature and ‘never manages to conceive the sensuous world as the total living sensuous activity of the individuals composing it’.e. And in order to single out the image of nature in itself it was necessary to expand rather more labour and effort than the simple efforts of ‘disinterested’. industry and commercial intercourse. ‘Even the objects of the simplest "sensuous certainty" are only given to him [i. labour.body of nature. production. Marx said. In immediate contemplation (intuition) the objective features of ‘nature in itself’ were bound up with the features and forms that had been stamped on it by the transforming activity of
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. to man — EVI] through social development. did not see that the object of his contemplation was the product of joint human labour. That was practice.’ Therefore.

transforming it. activity on objects). moreover.man. A purely objective picture of nature was therefore disclosed to man not in contemplation but only through activity and in the activity of man socially producing his own life. and as a result of. and all the purely objective characteristics of natural material. setting itself the aim of depicting the image of nature in itself. could indicate what it was like before and without ‘subjective distortions’. the subjective activities of social man. of society.e. Only practice. had to take that circumstance fully into account. Contemplation was immediately concerned not with the object but with objective activity (i. consequently. was capable of resolving which features of the object given in contemplation belonged to the object of nature
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. and with the results of this subjective (practical) activity. because only the same activity as transformed (altered and occasionally distorted) the ‘true image’ of nature. Thought. were given to contemplation through the image that the natural material had acquired in the course of.

’ But consumption. i.itself. Man must prove the truth.e.’ That. constitutes the solution of many of the difficulties that have faced and still face philosophers. i.e. as a need. and hence not a psychological one. the "this-sidedness" of his thinking in practice’. as a drive and as purpose. ‘The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question. by the subject. too. Marx formulated the question as follows: ‘If it is clear that production offers consumption its external object. the reality and power. Marx wrote in his second thesis on Feuerbach. it is therefore ideally equally the clear object that of consumption
posits
production as an internal image. and which had been introduced into it by man’s transforming activity. a problem of political economy. Therefore ‘the question whether objective truth is an attribute of human thought — is not a theoretical but a practical question. i.e. In analysing the relation of production to consumption. as Marx
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.

or the faculty of creating an object of certain form and using it for its purpose. including the nature of man as a biological creature. In the form of an active. the object exists ideally as a product of production. it is the socially determined form of the human being’s activity. in its role and function in the social organism. i. since it creates not only the external object but also the subject capable of producing and reproducing this object. production creates the form itself of man’s active practice. and an urge and goal of human activity.e. or production itself. but existing outside things. the ideal does not exist.e. requirement. As regards the natural. in the form of his active practice.e. The ideal is therefore nothing else than the form of things. i. and then of consuming it in the appropriate manner.showed. In nature itself. as an inner image. is only an inner moment of production. material organisation of the human body it has the same external character as it does in regard to
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. i. real faculty of man as the agent of social production. In other words. namely in man.

the material in which it is realised and objectified in the form of a sensuously perceived thing. the active form of social man’s activity. To try and explain the ideal from the anatomical and physiological properties of the
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. anatomical. But the material being of the ideal is not itself ideal but only the form of its expression in the organic body of the individual. physiological organisation of the body of the individual functioning as potter. in the form of the neuro-cerebral structures of the cortex of the brain. or as it is now fashionable to say. Thus the form of a jar growing under the hands of a potter does not form part either of the piece of clay or of the inborn. is ‘coded’. It is clear that the ideal.e. Only insofar as man trains and exercises the organs of his body on objects created by man for man does he become the bearer of the active forms of social man’s activity that create the corresponding objects. quite materially. is immediately embodied. i.e. i. In itself the ideal is the socially determined form of man’s life activity corresponding to the form of its object and product.

‘the perceptibly existing human psychology’. and any
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. and in no case of the anatomy and physiology of the brain as an organ of the individual’s body. is engendered and exists not in the head but with the help of the head in the real objective activity (activity on things) of man as the active agent of social production. Materialism is expressed here in understanding that the ideal. Scientific determinations of the ideal are therefore obtained by way of a materialist analysis of the ‘anatomy and physiology’ of the social production of the material and spiritual life of society. as Marx said. of human labour in the constantly renewed act of its reproduction that is. Materialism in this case does not consist at all in identifying the ideal with the material processes taking place in the head. as a socially determined form of the activity of man creating an object in one form or another. It is the world of the products.body of the brain is the same unfruitful whim as to try and explain the money form of the product of labour by the physico-chemical features of gold.

psychology to which this ‘open book’ of human psychology remains unknown. Only when expressed in these forms is the external. into the ideal. are products and forms of social development. transformed into social fact. cannot be a real science. who identify
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. into the property of social man. he did not understand this ‘head’ naturalistically.e. the material. It is only the form of expression of the ideal. its materialobjective being. all of whose forms of activity. When Marx defined the ideal as the material ‘transposed and translated inside the human head’. He had in mind the socially developed head of man. i. beginning with the forms of language and its word stock and syntactical system and ending with logical categories. transformation of the material into the ideal consists in the external fact being expressed in language. But language of itself is as little ideal as the neurophysiological structure of the brain. in terms of natural science. At first hand. which ‘is the immediate actuality of thought’ (Marx). Neopositivists.

etc.). and (2) when it is transformed into an active form of man’s activity with a real object (and not simply into a ‘term’ or ‘utterance’ as the material body of language). therefore make the same naturalistic mistake as scientists who identify the ideal with the structures and functions of brain tissue.thought (i.e.
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. too. with a system of terms and expressions. The material is really ‘transplanted’ into the human head. diagrams. including the language of drawings. and not simply into the brain as an organ of the individual’s body. models. In other words the object proves to be idealised only when the faculty of actively recreating it has been created. the form only of its material expression is taken for the ideal. has been created. and through deeds into things. the ideal) with language. generally significant forms of language (understood in the broadest sense of the word. Here. relying on the language of words or drawings. when the faculty of converting words into deeds. (1) only when it is expressed in immediately.

This definition provided the mode of constructing the thing in real space. A circle.e. for example. With good reason he linked adequate ideas. Here the nomical definition arose together with the real action of the thinking body along the spatial
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. But such a definition did not quite express the essence of a circle. Then a circle should be defined as a figure described by any line one end of which was fixed and the other moved. i. It was just there that he drew the distinction between a determination expressing the essence of the matter. its outward sign. expressed in the words of a language. could be defined as a figure in which lines drawn from the centre to the circumference were equal. It was another matter when the definition included the proximate cause of the thing. which property was derivative and secondary. the ideal image of the object. precisely with ability to reproduce given verbal forms in real space. and nominal.Spinoza understood this beautifully. formal definitions that fixed a more or less accidentally chosen property of the object. but only a certain property of it.

It is being. That is also a materialist conception of the nature of the ideal. It is that which is not. nothing. in combination with a need for the object. relying on the word.contour of the object of the idea. of the thing. and aim.e. urge. on language. that which does not exist in the form of an external. or the effective being of the external thing in the phase of its becoming in the activity of the subject. and not just signs expressed in words. The ideal image of the
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. The ideal exists there where there is a capacity to recreate the object in space. In that case man also possessed an adequate idea. Determination of the ideal is thus especially dialectical. and also from the bodily. in the form of its inner image. i. sensuously perceived thing but at the same time does exist as an active faculty of man. however. together with that which is. and therefore the ideal being of the thing is distinguished from its real being. plus material provision of the act of creation. an ideal image. material structures of the brain and language by which it exists ‘within’ the subject. need. which is.

as Hegel expressed this
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. namely the another. and then there is the reverse sequence of these metamorphoses. the latter is objectively registered in the subject in the form of the mechanisms of higher nervous activity. The ideal is consequently the subjective being of the object. into the object of labour. or its ‘otherness’. as follows: the form of the external. and then into the product of labour. thing involved in the labour process-is ‘sublated’ in the subjective form of objective activity (action on objects). as the form of social man’s activity. It is also distinguished from the external matter of nature but in the organic body of man and in the body of language as a subjective image. i. The ideal. the being of one object in and through situation. takes place. exists where the process of the transformation of the body of nature into the object of man’s activity. The same thing can be expressed in another way.object is distinguished from the structure of the brain and language in principle by the fact that it is the form of the external object.e.

What is ‘common’ is only discovered in the act of transforming the word into a deed. These two contrary series of metamorphoses form a closed cycle: thing-deed-word-deed-thing. through the external. constantly renewed. and through the deed into the form of an external. as a name. in practice and the mastering of its results. its meaning. proves at the same time to be the being of another body and as such is its ‘ideal being’. As a sign. Only in this cyclic movement.verbally expressed idea is transformed into a deed. sensuously perceived. the ideal image of the thing exist. which is quite distinct from its bodily form immediately perceived by the ears or eyes. does the ideal. while remaining itself. into a thing. and through the deed into a thing (and then again in the reverse process). a word has nothing in common with what it is the sign of.e. i. sensuously perceived thing. The ideal is immediately realised in a symbol and through a symbol.
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. But this body. visual or audible body of a word.

Man exists as man. and so long. which is performed in socially developed and socially sanctioned forms. and the language of symbols is born as the external body of the ideal image of the external world. as he actively produces his real life in forms created by himself and by his own labour. like their form of value
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. And labour. or the act of the birth of the ideal. clearer. and social relations is completed. let us analyse the most typical case of the idealisation of actuality. namely the phenomenon of price in political econmy. of commodities is. ‘The price. In that is the secret of the ideal and in that too is its solution. from such time. the real transformation of the world around and of himself. or the money form. as the subject of activity directed to the world around and to himself. nature. idealisation of reality. In order to make both the essence of the secret. and the means by which Marx resolved it. is just the process beginning and continuing completely independent of thought-within which the ideal is engendered and functions as its metamorphosis.

only an ideal or imaginary form. Idealism on the contrary consists in affirming that price.generally. since it is only an ideal form. It is that which constitutes the materialism of the Marxian conception of price. who wrote not only as a philosopher but also as an economist. was not money. in a certain quantity of gold. Yet it is ‘only an ideal form’. In making his critique of the idealist conception of money. psychic phenomenon. by its nature. the interpretation that was given by none other than Bishop Berkeley. It proved to be money because it performed a peculiar social function. exists solely as a subjective. It is. and as such functioned in the system of social relations between people in the process of the production
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. But gold of itself. for example. that is to say. distinct from their palpable and real bodily form. the measure of value of all commodities. Marx showed that price was the value of the product of man’s labour expressed in money.’ In the first place let ut note that price is an objective category and not a psychophysiological phenomenon.

‘As price. too. represented and replaced that . there now exists the commodity as ideally posited money. the ideality of the form of price. the commodity relates to money on one side as something existing outside itself."’ The ideal positing. is accomplished during the circulation of the mass of commodities. the commodity is posited as money in the mind. and was its metamorphosis.’ After money is posited as a commodity in reality. while remaining itself in the process of circulation. nevertheless proved to be immediately the form of existence and movement of a certain ‘other’.. Alongside real money.and exchange of products. and secondly it is ideally posited as money itself.. It arises as a means of resolving the contradictions maturing in the course of the circulation process.other’ in the process of commoditymoney circulation. Gold. as a means of satisfying a need that has
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. and within it (and not inside the head. hence. or positing of the real product as the ideal image of another product. since money has a reality different from it. though not without the help of the head)..

‘The problem and the means of solution. acquires. a generalised or social equivalent
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. inasmuch as it comes to function as equivalent for various other commodities. This need. the following position had already taken shape: ‘Intercourse in virtue of which the owners of commodities exchange their own articles for various other articles. is satisfied and resolved by one commodity ‘being expelled’ from their equal family and being converted into the immediately social standard of the socially necessary expenditure of labour. before the appearance of money (before the conversion of gold into money). ‘arise simultaneously. which appears in the form of an unresolved contradiction of the commodity form. and compare their own articles with various other articles.become immanent in commodity circulation.’ as Marx said. never takes place without leading the various owners of the various kinds of articles to exchange these for one special article in which the values of all the others are equated. Such a third commodity. though within narrow limits.’ In real exchange.

form.’ Thus the possibility and the necessity also arise of expressing the reciprocal exchange relation of two commodities through the exchange value of a third commodity, still without the latter entering directly into the real exchange but serving merely as the general measure of the value of the commodities really exchanged. And the ‘third commodity’, although it does not enter bodily into the exchange, is all the same involved in the act of exchange, since it is also present only ideally, i.e. in the idea, in the mind of the commodity-owners, in speech, on paper, and so on. But it is thus transformed into a symbol and precisely into a symbol of the social relations between people. All theories of money and value that reduce value and its forms to pure symbolics, to the naming of relations, to a conventionally or legally instituted sign, are associated with that circumstance. By the logic of their origin and structure they are organically related to those philosophers and logicians who, not being able to conceive the act of birth. of the ideal from the

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process of social man’s objective-practical activity proclaim the forms of expression of the ideal in speech, in terms and statements, behind to be conventional phenomena, which,

however, there stands something mystically elusive-be it the ‘experience’ of Neopositivists, the ‘existence’ of Existentialists, or the intuitively grasped, incorporeal, mystical ‘eidetic being’ of Edmund Husserl. Marx disclosed once and for all the whole triviality of such theories of the ideal, and of its reduction to a symbol or sign of immaterial relations (or connections as such, connections without a material substratum). ‘The fact that commodities arc only nominally converted in the form of prices into gold and hence gold is only nominally transformed into money led to the doctrine of the nominal standard of money. Because only imaginary gold or silver, i.e. gold and silver merely as money of account, is used in the determination of prices, it was asserted that the terms pound, shilling, pence, thaler, franc, etc., denote ideal particles of value but not weights of gold or silver or any

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form of materialised labour. Furthermore, it was already easy to pass to the notion that the prices of commodities were merely terms for relations or propositions, pure signs. Thus objective economic phenomena were transformed into simple symbols behind which there was hidden the will as their substance, representation as the ‘inner experience’ of the individual Ego, interpreted in the spirit of Hume and Berkeley. By exactly the same scheme modern idealists in logic convert terms and statements (the verbal envelope of the ideal image of the object) into , simple names of relations in which tile ‘experiences’ of the I solitary individual are posited by the symbolising activity of language. simply Logical into the relations names are of transformed known). It must be specially stressed that the ideal transformation of a commodity into gold, and thus of gold into a symbol of social relations, took place both in time and in essence before the real

connections (but of what with what is not

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conversion of the commodity into money, ‘i.e. into hard cash. Gold became the measure of the value of commodities before it became the medium of circulation, and so functioned initially as money purely ideally. ‘Money only circulates commodities which have already been ideally transformed into money, not only in the head of the individual but in the conception held by society (directly, the conception held by the participants in the process of buying and selling).’ That is a fundamentally important point of the Marxian conception not only of the phenomenon of price but also of the problem of the ideal, the problem of the idealisation of reality in general. The fact is that the act of exchange always posits an already formed system of relations between people mediated by things; it is expressed in one of the sensuously perceived things being, transformed, without ceasing to function in the system as a separate, sensuously perceived body, into the representative of any other body, into the sensuously perceived body of an ideal image. In other words, it is the external embodiment of

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another thing, not its sensuously perceived image but rather its essence, i.e. the law of its existence within the system that in general creates the situation being analysed. The given thing is thus transformed into a symbol the meaning of which remains all the time outside its immediately perceived image, in other sensuously perceived things, and is disclosed only through the whole system of relations of other things to it or, conversely, of it to all the others. But when this thing is really removed from the system it loses its role, i.e. its significance as a symbol, and is transformed things. Its existence and functioning as a symbol consequently does not belong to It as such but only to the ‘ system within which it has acquired its properties. The properties attaching to it from 1-iature therefore have no relation to its existence as a symbol. The corporeal, sensuously perceived envelope or ‘body’ of the symbol (the body of the thing that has been transformed into a symbol) is once more into an ordinary, sensuously perceived thing along with other such

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quite unessential, transient, and temporary for its existence as a symbol; the ‘functional existence’ of such a thing completely ‘absorbs ... .its material existence , as Marx put it. Furthermore, i e material body of the thing is brought into conformity with its function. As a result the symbol is converted into a token, i.e. into an object that already means nothing in itself but only represents or expresses another object with which it itself has nothing in common (like the name of the thing with the thing itself). The dialectic of the transformation of a thing into a symbol, and of a symbol into a token, is also traced in Capital on the example of the origin and evolution of the money form of value. The functional existence of a symbol consists precisely in its not representing itself but another, and in being a means, an instrument expressing the essence of other sensuously perceived things, i.e. their universal, sociallyhuman significance, their role and function within the social organism. In other words, the function of a symbol consists in its being just the

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body of the ideal image of the external thing, or rather the law of its existence, the law of the universal. A symbol removed from the real process of exchange of matter between social man and nature also ceases in general to be a symbol, the corporeal envelope of the ideal image. Its ‘soul’ vanishes from its body because its ‘soul’ is in fact the objective activity of social man effecting an exchange of matter between humanised and virgin nature. Without an ideal image man cannot, in general exchange matter with nature, and the individual cannot operate with things involved in the process of social production. But the ideal image requires real material, including language, for--its realisation. Therefore labour engenders a need for language, and then language itself. When man operates with symbols or with tokens and not with objects, relying on symbols and tokens, he does not act on the ideal plane but only on the verbal plane. And it very often happens that, instead of discovering the real essence of things by means of terms, the

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individual sees only the terms themselves with their traditional meanings, sees only the symbol and its sensuously perceived body. In that case the linguistic symbol is transformed from an instrument of real activity into a fetish, blocking off with its body the reality that it represents. Then, instead of understanding and consciously changing the external world in accordance with its general laws expressed in the form of the ideal image, man begins to see and change only the verbal, terminological expression and thinks that, in so doing he is changing the world itself. This fetishisation of the verbal existence of the ideal was very characteristic of the Left Hegelian philosophy of the period of its decline, to which Marx and Engels drew attention at the time. It itself, and with it fetishisation of the system of social relations that it represents, proves to be the absolutely inevitable end of any philosophy that does not understand that the ideal is engendered and reproduced only through social man’s objective-practical activity, and that it also only exists in that process. In the opposite

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case some form or other of fetishisation both of the external world and of Symbolics develops. It is very curious that no variety of fetishisation of the verbal-symbolic existence of the ideal embraces the ideal as such. Fetishisation registers the results of human activity but not man’s activity itself, so that it embraces not the ideal it-self but only its estrangement in external objects or in language, i.e. congealed products. That is not surprising; the ideal as a form of human activity exists only in that activity, and not in its results, because the activity is a constant, continuing negation of the existing, sensuously perceived forms of things, is their change and sublation into new forms, taking place in accordance with general patterns expressed in ideal forms. When an object has been created society’s need for it is satisfied; the activity has petered out in its product, and the ideal itself has died. An ideal image, say of bread, may arise in the imagination of a hungry man or of a baker. In the head of a satiated man occupied in building a

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house, ideal bread does not arise. But if we take society as a whole ideal bread, and ideal houses, are always in existence, and any ideal object with which man is concerned in the process of production and reproduction of his material life. In consequence of that all nature is idealised in man and not just that part which he immediately produces or reproduces or consumes in a practical way. Without a constant re-idealising of the real objects of human life activity, without their transformation into the ideal, and so without symbolisation, man cannot in general be the active subject of social production. The ideal also appears as the product and form of human labour, of the purposive transformation of natural material and social relations effected by social man. The ideal is present only where there is an individual performing his activity in forms given to him by the preceding development of humanity. Man is distinguished from beasts by the existence of an ideal plane of activity. ‘But what ... distinguishes the most incompetent architect and the best of

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as a material organ of the separate individual’s body. already existed in an ideal form. In that sense the product of the bee’s activity is also given ‘ideally’ before its real performance.e. The labour process ends in the creation of something which. between the architect and the bee. The fundamental distinction between man’s activity
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.bees. inherited together with the structural. The form of activity that we can denote as the ideal existence of the product is never differentiated from the body of the animal in any other way than as some real product. then there is no difference in principle. it transpires. i.’ We must once more note that if the head is understood naturalistically. But the insect’s forms of activity are innate in it. is that the architect has built a cell in his head before he constructs it is wax. The wax cell that the bee builds also exists beforehand in the form of the pattern of the insect’s activity programmed in its nerve centres. when the process began. anatomical Organisation of its body. already existed in the worker’s imagination.

strictly speaking. no one faculty. that definition was. All forms of activity (active faculties) are passed on only in the form of objects created by man for man.and the activity of an animal is this. i. the ideal image of its object and product. When the ideal was defined above as the form of man’s activity. that no one form of this activity. is inherited together with the anatomical organisation of the body. incomplete. It characterised the ideal only according to its objectively conditioned content. but the ideal is only there where the form itself of the activity corresponding to the form of the external object is transformed for man into a special object with which he can operate specially without touching and without changing the real
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. are therefore transformed in a special process that does not coincide with the objective moulding of nature (shaping of nature in objects). The individual mastery of a humanly determined form of activity.e. The form itself of man’s activity is therefore transformed into a special object. into the object of special activity.

of the real with the ideal. That constitutes the epistemological basis of the identification of the thing with the idea. in the final product — in the idea — the image of the thing is always merged with the image of the activity in which this thing functions. as the ideal i-s-still not. the objectification of the form of activity as a result of which it becomes possible to take it as the’ form of the thing. the epistemological root of any kind or shade of idealism. or more concretely given the spontaneous division of labour. ceases to be ‘merged’ with the form of his life activity. -he — separates it from himself and. Man. True. in which the form
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. giving it his attention transforms it into an idea. and only man.e.object up to a certain point. as a matter of fact. Since man is given the external thing in general only insofar as it is involved in the process of his activity. and conversely the form of the thing as the product and form of subjective activity. This real fact is only transformed into one variety or another of idealism or fetishism given certain social conditions. idealism. i.

‘Did not the ancient Moloch reign? Was not the Delphic Apollo a real power in the life of the Greeks? Kant’s critique means nothing in this respect.. noted that all the ancient gods possessed the same ‘real existence’ as money did. if only in the
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. then these hundred imagined talers have for him the same value as a hundred real ones. The objectification (materialisation) of social forms of human activity characteristic of commodity production (commodity fetishism) is quite analogous to the religious alienation of active human faculties in ideas about gods.. if he believes in it. subjective one. Has a real taler any existence except in the imagination. still a Left Hegelian. Thus the young Marx.of activity is forcibly imposed on the individual by social processes that are independent of him and not understood by him. If somebody imagines that he has a hundred talers. This analogy is -realised quite clearly already within the limits of the objectiveidealist view of the nature of the ideal.. Real talers have the same existence that the imagined gods have. if this concept is not for him an arbitrary.

on the plane of the drawing board. In changing it he potentially alters the real house. The architect builds a house. Up to a certain point man is able to change the form of his activity (or the ideal image of the external thing) without touching the thing itself. not simply in his head but by means of his head. in the active role of the ideal image (notion). He thus alters his internal state. and the forms of practice. cited by Marx. on the basis of the materialist conception of nature and money and religious images. however. Let us recall once more the example of the architect. but only because he can separate the ideal image from himself. The ‘similarity’ of commodity fetishism and religious estrangement is rooted in the real connection of people’s social ideas and their real activity. and operating with it as with an object distinct from himself. and operate with it as with an object existing outside him. externalising it. was only disclosed by him later.
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.general or rather common imagination of man? The real nature of this analogy. objectify it. on the plane of ideas on Whatman paper.

difference philosophical. changes it ideally. A person cannot pass the ideal as such to another person. altering the ideal image of an object. material epistemological between
activity and the activity of the theoretician and ideologist who directly alters only the verbal. is also sensuous objective activity transforming the sensuously perceived image of the thing to which it is directed. One can observe the activity of a painter or an engineer as long as one likes. but one can thus only copy the external techniques and methods of their work but never
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.e. potentially. the form of their activity. striving to catch their mode of action. That circumstance also makes it possible to slur over the fundamental. as the pure form of activity. which means that he alters one sensuously perceived object instead of another. token objectification of the ideal image. it is only the objectified idea or form of the person’s activity taken as a thing. In other words activity on the plane of representation. Only the thing altered here is special.i.

The ideal.the ideal image itself. through the objective form of the thing. image) of living activity. as the form of subjective activity. The ideal image of objective reality therefore also only exists as the form (mode. it posits the capacity to correlate the ideal image consciously
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. through its active disobjectification. through the form of its product. but not as a thing. which determine the will and aptitude of individuals to act as an aim and law. and so on. i. new social needs. The ideal is nothing else than a concatenation of the general forms of human activity realised by individuals.e. with its correcting in accordance with the specific conditions. or rather with concretisation of the image. And so. coordinated with the form of its object. the active faculty itself. the peculiarities of the material. It is quite understandable that the individual realisation of the ideal image is always linked With some deviation or other. is only masterable through active operation with the object and product of this activity. not as a materially fixed state or structure.

he proves incapable of taking a critical attitude to this image. In that case. which dominates his mind and will as an externally given formal scheme. on the contrary. Then he merges with it. as a system of unarguable rules coming inevitably
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. the individual only masters the ideal image formally. not yet idealised actuality.with real. as an estranged image. and cannot treat it as an object correlated with reality and alter it accordingly.e. Here it is not the ideal image that is a real function of the individual but. as a fetish. as a special object differentiated from him. as a rigid pattern and sequence of operations. and object that he can alter purposively in accordance with the needs
(requirements) of his activity. the individual who is a function of the image. strictly speaking. i. without understanding its origin and links with real (not idealised) actuality. as it were. it is not the individual who operates with the ideal image but the dogmatised image that acts in and through the individual. When. In that case the ideal functions as a special object for the individual. on the contrary.

such as the product. The idealist conception of the nature of the ideal corresponds to just such a consciousness. are the individuals... ‘Everything that has a fixed form. In communist society. but individuals in mutual relationships. The conditions and objectifications of the process are themselves equally moments of it. in this movement. but will be the form of his own real activity. The
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. a vanishing moment. which they equally reproduce and produce anew. The materialist conception. and its only subjects.from somewhere out of the blue. will prove to be natural to the man of communist society in which culture will not be counterposed to the individual as something given to him from outside. it will become immediately obvious that all forms of culture are only forms of the activity of man himself. on the contrary. appears as merely a moment.. which is only brought to light in the conditions of bourgeois dispelling society the by a theoretical analysis illusions
inevitable under them. etc. as Marx showed. something independent and alien..

but only in the course of its being altered by man: and that both the contemplating man himself and the world contemplated were products of history. alters the approach to the key problems of logic in a cardinal way. The forms of thought. but primarily as universal forms of sensuously objective reflected in consciousness. were accordingly understood not as simple abstractions social man’s from unhistorically understood activity sensuousness. too.’ A consistently materialist conception of thought. in which they renew themselves even as they renew the world of wealth they create. in particular to interpretation of the nature of logical categories.constant process of their own movement. The real objective equivalent of logical forms was seen not simply in the abstract. of course. Marx and Engels established above all that the external world was not given to the individual as it was in itself simply and directly in his contemplation. general contours of the object contemplated by the individual but in the forms
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. the categories.

120 The subject of thought here already proved to be the individual in the nexus of social relations. to whom they are counterposed as the forms of a historically developed system of culture. by the process of the moulding of human culture. since the development of social consciousness is not a simple arithmetic sum of psychic process but a special process governed in general and on the whole by the laws of
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. a system that does not develop at all according to the laws o psychology. all the forms of whose life activity were given not by nature. the socially determined individual. and it is the measure that man has earned to change nature that his intelligence has increased. which is the most essential and immediate basis of human thought. not solely nature as such. but by history.of man’s real activity transforming nature in accordance with his own ends: ‘It is precisely the alteration of nature by men. The-forms of human activity (and the thought-forms reflecting them) are consequently laid down in the course of history independently of the will and consciousness of individuals.

together with language of and act the of knowledge expressed in it. also actively determine that will and consciousness. but assimilates them ready-made in the course of his own acquiring of culture. and cannot do so. These laws not only do not depend on the will and consciousness of individuals but.development of society’s material life. Psychological analysis the reflexion of the external world in the individual head therefore cannot be the means of developing logic. on the contrary.
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. The separate individual does not develop the universal forms of human activity by himself. rightly considering it a premise independent of the individual. And psychology as a science does not investigate the development of human culture or civilisation. whatever the powers of abstraction he possesses. The individual thinks only insofar as he has already mastered the general (logical) determinations historically moulded before him and completely independently of him.

While Hegel’s recording of these facts led him to idealism, Marx and Engels, having considered the real (objective) prototype of logical definitions and laws in the concrete, universal forms and laws of social man’s objective activity, cut off any possibility of subjectivist interpretation of the activity itself. Man does not act on nature from outside, but ‘confronts nature as one of her own forces’ and his objective activity is therefore linked at every stage with, and mediated by, objective natural laws. Man ‘makes use of the mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of things as means of exerting power over other things, and in order to make these other things subservient to his aims .... Thus nature becomes an instrument of his activities, an instrument with which he supplements his own bodily organs, adding a cubit and more to his stature, scripture notwithstanding’. It is just in that that the secret of the universality of human activity lies, which idealism passes off as the consequence of reason operating in man: ‘The universality of man

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appears in practice precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body — both inasmuch a nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the material, the object, and the instrument of his life activity. Nature is man’s inorganic body — nature, that is, insofar as it is not itself the human body.’ The laws of human activity are therefore also, above all, laws of the natural material from which ‘man’s inorganic body’, the objective (material) body of civilisation, is built, i.e. laws of the movement and change of the objects of nature, transformed into the organs of man, into moments of the process of production of society’s material life. In labour (production) man makes one object of nature act on another object of the same nature in accordance with their own properties and laws of existence . Marx and Engels showed that the logical forms of man’s action were the consequences (reflection) of real laws of human actions on objects, i.e. of practice in all its scope and development, laws that are independent of

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any

thinking.

Practice

understood

materialistically, appeared as a process in whose movement each object involved in it functioned (behaved) in accordance with its own laws, bringing its own form and measure to light in the changes taking place in it. Thus mankind’s practice is a fully concrete (particular) process, and at the same time a universal one. It includes all other forms and types of the movement of matter as its abstract moments, and takes place in conformity with their laws. The general laws governing man’s changing of nature therefore transpire to be also general laws of the change of nature itself, revealed by man’s activity, and not by orders foreign to it, dictated from outside. The universal laws of man’s changing of nature are also universal laws of nature only in accordance with which can man successfully alter it. Once realised they also appear as laws of reason, as logical laws. Their ‘specificity’ consists precisely in their in their universality, i.e. in the fact that they are not only laws of subjectivity (as laws of the

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physiology of higher nervous activity or of language), and not only of objective reality (as laws of physics or chemistry), but also laws governing. the movement both of objective reality and of subjective human life activity. (That does not mean at all, of course, that thought does not in general possess any ‘specific features’ worthy of study. As a special process possessing features specifically distinguishing it from the movement of objective reality, i.e. as a psycho-physiological faculty of the human individual, thought has, of course, to be subjected to very detailed study in psychology and the physiology of the higher nervous system, but not in logic). In subjective consciousness these laws appear as ‘plenipotentiaries’ of the rights of the object, as its universal, ideal image: ‘The laws of logic are the reflections of the objective in the subjective consciousness of man.’

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9: On the Coincidence of Logic with Dialectics and the Theory of Knowledge of Materialism Like any other science logic is concerned with explaining and systematising objective forms and patterns not dependent on men’s will and consciousness, within which human activity, both material-objective and mental-theoretical, takes place. Its subject matter is the objective laws of subjective activity. Such a conception is quite unacceptable -to traditional logic since, from the standpoint of the latter, it unites the unjoinable, i.e. an affirmation and its negation, A and not-A, opposing predicates. For the subjective is not objective, and vice versa. -But the state of affairs in the real world and in the science comprehending it also proves unacceptable to traditional logic, because in it the transition, formation, and transformation of things and processes (including into their own opposite) prove to be the essence of the matter at every step. Traditional logic is consequently inadequate to the real practice of scientific and

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therefore has to be brought into correspondence with the latter. Marx and Engels showed that science and practice, quite independently of consciously acquired logical notions, developed in accordance with the universal laws that had been described by the dialectical tradition in philosophy. It can (and in fact does) happen, even in situations when each separate representative of science involved in its general progress is consciously guided by undialectical ideas about thought. Science as a whole, through the clash of undialectical opinions mutually provoking and correcting one another, develops for all that in accordance with a logic of a higher type and order. The theoretician who has succeeded finally in finding the concrete solution to some contentious problem or other has been objectively forced to think dialectically. Genuine logical necessity drives a road for itself in this case despite the theoretician’s consciousness, instead of being realised purposively and freely. It

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therefore transpires that the greatest theoreticians and natural scientists, whose work has determined the main lines of development of science, have been guided as a rule by the dialectical traditions in logic. Thus Albert Einstein owed much to Spinoza, and Heisenberg to Plato, and so on. Taking this conception as their starting point, Marx, Engels, and Lenin established that it was dialectics, and only dialectics, that was the real logic in accordance with which modern thought made progress. It was it, too, that operated at the ‘growing points’ of modern science, although the representatives of science were not wholly conscious of the fact. That was why logic as a science coincided (merged) not only with dialectics but also with the theory of knowledge of materialism. ‘In Capital Marx applied to a single science logic, dialectics, and the theory of knowledge of materialism (three words are not needed; it is one and the same thing),’ is how Lenin categorically formulated it.

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The problem of the relation of logic, the theory of knowledge, and dialectics occupied a special place in Lenin’s work. One can say, without danger of exaggeration, that it forms the core of all his special philosophical reflections, to which he returned again and again, each time formulating his conception and solution more succinctly and categorically. In Lenin’s reflections, especially those arising in the course of critical rethinking of Hegelian structures, two themes are clearly distinguished: 1. the inter-relation between logic and epistemology; and 2. the conception of dialectics as a science that includes its own scientific, theoretical solution of problems that are traditionally isolated from it in the form of logic and the theory of knowledge. Reconstruction of the considerations that enabled Lenin to formulate the position of modern materialism (i.e. Marxism) so categorically is very important for the simple reason that no

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unanimous interpretation of his propositions has yet been reached in Soviet philosophy. Although the direct object of the critical analysis Notebooks documented was first in and the Philosophical Hegel’s foremost

conception, it would of course be a mistake to see in that book only a critical commentary on Hegel’s works. Lenin was concerned, it goes without saying, not with Hegel as such but with the real content of problems that still preserve their urgent significance to this day. In other words Lenin undertook, in the form of a critical analysis of the Hegelian conception, a survey of the state of affairs in philosophy in his own day, comparing and evaluating the means of posing and resolving its cardinal problems. Quite naturally, the problem of scientific knowledge came to the fore, around which-and more clearly as time went on-all world philosophical thought revolved at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Here is how Lenin depicted the aim of his investigations: "The theme

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of logic. To be compared with present-day "epistemology".’ The inverted commas enclosing the word ‘epistemology’ are not there quite by chance. The fact is that the isolation of a number of old philosophical problems in a special philosophical science (it is all the same whether we recognise it then as the sole form of scientific philosophy or as only of the many divisions of philosophy) is a fact of recent origin. The term itself came into currency only in the latter half of the nineteenth century as the designation of a special science, of a special field of investigation that had not been sharply distinguished in any way in the classical philosophical systems, and had not constituted either a special science or even a special division, although it would be an error, of course, to affirm that knowledge in general and scientific knowledge in particular had only become the subject of specially close attention with the development of ‘epistemology’. The setting up of epistemology as a special science was associated historically and essentially

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with the broad spread of Neokantianism, which became, during the last third of the nineteenth century, the most influential trend in the bourgeois philosophical thought of Europe, and was converted into the officially recognised school of professorial, university philosophy, first in Germany, and then in all those areas of the world from which people came to the German universities hoping to study serious professional philosophy there. Neokantianism owed its spread not least to the traditional fame of Germany as the home of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Its special feature was not at all, of course, the discovery of knowledge as the central philosophical problem, but the specific form in which it was posed, which boiled down (despite all the disagreements among the various branches of this school) to the following: ‘It is accepted to call the doctrine of knowledge, inquiring into the conditions by which indisputably existing knowledge becomes possible, and limits are established in accordance with these conditions up to -which any knowledge whatsoever can be

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extended but beyond which there opens up the sphere of equally undemonstrable opinions, the "theory of knowledge" or "epistemology".... The theory of knowledge, of course, together with the tasks mentioned above, rightly poses itself yet other, and supplementary, tasks. But if it wants to be a science making sense it must, above all, concern itself with explaining the problem of the existence or non-existence of boundaries to knowledge . . . . ‘ The Russian Kantian A. I. Vvedensky, author of the definition just quoted, very accurately and clearly indicated the special feature of the science that ‘it is accepted to call’ epistemology in the literature of the Neokantian trend, and in all the schools that have arisen under its predominant influence. Dozens of similar formulations could be cited from the classical authors of Neokantianism (Rickert, Wundt, Cassirer, Windelband) and the work of such representatives of ‘daughter’ branches as Schuppe and Vaihinger.

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The job of the theory of knowledge, consequently, establishment was of considered ‘limits of to be the knowledge’,

boundaries that knowledge could not cross in any circumstances, or however high the development of the cognitive capacities of a person or of humanity, or of the technique of scientific experiment and research. These ‘limits’ differentiated the sphere of what was knowable, in principle from that of what was in principle unknowable, extralimital, ‘transcendent’. They were not determined at all by the limitation of human experience in space and time (in that case extension of the ‘sphere of experience’ would constantly widen them, and the problem would boil down simply to differentiation between what was already known and what was not yet known but was, in principle, knowable), but by the eternal and immutable nature of man’s psychophysiological peculiarities through which all external influences were refracted (as through a prism). These ‘specific mechanisms’, by which alone the external world was given to man, were

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those that generated the ‘limit’ beyond which lay what was in principle unknowable. What was unknowable in principle proved to be nothing more nor less than the real world lying outside man’s consciousness, as it was ‘before its appearance in consciousness’. In other words ‘epistemology’ was distinguished as a special science in this tradition only on the grounds of a priori acceptance of the thesis that, human knowledge was not knowledge of the external world (i.e. existing outside consciousness) but was only a process of the ordering, organisation, and systematisation of facts of ‘inner experience’, i.e. ultimately of the psycho-physiological states of the human organism, absolutely dissimilar to the states and events of the external world. That meant that any science, be it physics or political economy, mathematics or history, did not tell us anything (and could not) about just how matters stood in the external world, because in fact it described only facts arising within ourselves, the psycho-physiological phenomena illusorily perceived as a sum of external facts.

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For the sake of special proof of this thesis a special science ‘epistemology’ was created that concerned itself exclusively with the ‘inner conditions’ of knowledge and purged them carefully of any dependence whatsoever on the effect of ‘external conditions’, above all of a ‘condition’ such as the existence of an external world with its own objective laws. ‘Epistemology’ was thus distinguished as a special science counterposed to ‘ontology’ (or ‘metaphysics’), and not at all as a discipline investigating the real course of human knowledge of the surrounding world; quite the contrary, it was born as a doctrine postulating that every form of knowledge without exception was not a form of knowledge of the surrounding world but only a specific schema of the organisation of the subject of knowledge’. From the standpoint of this ‘theory of knowledge’ any attempt to interpret existing knowledge as knowledge (understanding) of the surrounding ‘metaphysics’, world was impermissible of purely ‘ontologisation’

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subjective forms of activity, an illusory attributing of determinations of the subject to ‘things in themselves’, to the world outside consciousness. By ‘metaphysics’ and’ ontology’ then was meant not so much a special science of ‘the world as a whole’, a universal scheme of the world, as the whole aggregate of real, so-called ‘positive’ sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, political economy, history, and so on). So that the main fervour of Neokantian ‘epistemologism’ proved to be directed precisely against the idea of a scientific world outlook, of a scientific understanding of the world realised in the real sciences themselves. A ‘scientific world outlook’, according to this view, was an absurdity, nonsense, since ‘science’ (read: the whole aggregate of natural and social sciences) in general knew nothing about the world outside consciousness and did not speak of it. Under the scornful term ‘metaphysics’ Neokantians therefore in fact refuse the laws and patterns discovered and formulated by physics, chemistry, biology, political economy, history, etc., any

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philosophical significance as a world outlook. From their point of view metaphysics could not be a ‘science’, and science (read again: the aggregate of all sciences) could not and had no right to play the role of ‘metaphysics’, i.e. to lay claim to an objective meaning (in the materialist sense of the term) for its statements. A world outlook therefore also could not be scientific, because it was the connected aggregate of views of the world within which man lived, acted, and thought, and science was not in a position to unite its achievements in a world outlook without thereby falling had into difficulties that were been unresolvable for it, into contradictions. This already, allegedly, demonstrated once and for all by Kant. It was impossible to build a world outlook from the data of science. But why not, precisely? Because the very principles of knowledge, which were the conditions for the possibility of any scientific synthesis of notions into concepts, judgments, and inferences, i.e. into categories, at the same time also proved to be the conditions of

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the impossibility of achieving a full synthesis of all scientific ideas into the body of a connected, united, and non-contradictory picture of the world. And that, in the language of Kantians, meant that a world outlook built on scientific principles (or simply a scientific world outlook) was impossible in principle. In a scientific world outlook (and not by chance, not from lack of information, but of the necessity inherent in the very nature of thought expressed in categorial schemas) there were always flaws of contradictions cracking it to bits that were unconnectable with one another without flagrant breach of the supreme principle of all analytical judgments, the principle of contradiction in scientific determinations. Man could unite and connect the isolated fragments of the scientific picture of the world into a higher unity in one way only, by breaking his own supreme principles; or, what was the same thing, by turning unscientific schemas of the coupling of ideas in a united whole into the principles of synthesis, since the latter had no

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relation with the principle of contradiction, but were the principles of faith and opinion, dogmas that were equally undemonstrable and and were uncontrovertible scientifically,

acceptable solely according to irrational whims, sympathy, conscience, etc., etc. Only faith was capable of synthesising the fragments of knowledge into a united picture at those points where all attempts to do so by means of science were doomed to failure. Hence the slogan specific to all Kantians of the uniting of science and faith, of the logical principles of the construction of a scientific picture of the world and of irrational precepts (logically undemonstrable compensating the highest synthesis and the of incontrovertible), to accomplish

powerlessness organically built into the intellect knowledge. Only within the limits described above could the meaning of the Kantian posing of the problem of the relation of logic to the theory of knowledge be understood. Logic as such was interpreted by all Kantians as part of the theory

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Occasionally this ‘part’ was given the main significance and it almost swallowed the whole (for example. never covered the whole field of the problems of the theory of knowledge. Logic. Cassirer and Rickert. which moved in rigorous determinations and in strict accord with rules clearly realisable and formulatable. The theory of knowledge was broader. and occasionally it was relegated to a more modest place. into science. but logic was always ‘part’. and ideas into the form of knowledge. in the variants of Cohen and Natorp. into concepts and a system of concepts. means of processing the data of sensations. therefore. and intuition. that is to say. because its job was wider.of knowledge. perceptions. only partly
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. beyond it lay an analysis of processes effected by other aptitudes. as the theory of discursive thought. since reason (understanding’ was not the sole. in the Kantian interpretation. though the most important. subordinated to the other ‘parts’ of the theory of knowledge. perception. Logic. and imagination. and many others. Vvedensky and Chelpanov). and memory.

their resolution into simple components.e. and the reverse operation. thus also remained logic’s chief task. systems of concepts. singled out from the whole complex of cognitive faculties. to the psychic phenomena of human culture. i. only through analysis of its own object. the synthesis or into linking together of the of components complex systems
determinations (concepts. expressed in strictly defined terms. i.did the job of the theory of knowledge. The main job of the theory of knowledge. however. to establish the limits of knowledge and clarify the inner limitedness of the possibilities of thought in the course of constructing a world outlook. It was applicable solely to things already realised (with or without its involvement).e. Logic therefore had neither the least connection nor least relation with understanding of the real world of ‘things in themselves’.
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. Its special task was rigorous analysis of the already available images of consciousness (transcendental objects). i.e.

to sensations. or of crossing the boundaries dividing the ‘phenomenal’ world from the world of ‘things in themselves’. So that. Logic must also demonstrate that real discursive thought was incapable of leading knowledge beyond the limits of existing consciousness. even within the boundaries of knowledge. serve as filters. to ideas. could not concern itself with ‘things in themselves’. within which the rules of logic were binding and obligatory. of the immortality of the soul. as it were. and had no right to.
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. But they did. retaining these images at the boundaries of scientific knowledge. and had to. The laws and rules of logic were inapplicable to the images of perception as such. And only that. if it were logical. to the phantoms of mythologised consciousness. To judge whether these images were true in themselves. thought was assigned in turn a limited field of legitimate application. and so on.theories) again by the same rigorously established rules. Thought. including in that the idea of God.

before and outside science. scientifically verified position in relation to any image of consciousness if it arose before and independently of the special logical activity of the mind. embraced the whole field of the problems of knowledge and left no images of contemplation or fantasy outside its boundaries. In fact there was not and could not be a rationally substantiated. outside the jurisdiction of reason and comprehension and therefore morally and epistemologically inviolable. thought oriented on logic had neither the possibilities nor the right. the existence of such images was inadmissible.whether they played a positive or a negative role in the body of spiritual culture. In Hegel’s understanding of the matter logic as a whole and in full.
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. without irrational vestiges. inside its specific limits defined by logic. Beyond its limits their existence was sovereign. one can understand the close attention that Lenin paid to Hegel’s solution of this problem. Considering the special features of the Kantian interpretation of the relation of logic and epistemology. In science.

but in things (actions. Logic merged here with the theory of knowledge because all other cognitive faculties were considered as forms of thought. logic coincides with the theory of
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. Hegel’s — EVI). had not yet matured to it. as thinking that had not yet attained an adequate form of expression. that Lenin formulated his attitude to the Hegelian solution very cautiously: ‘In this conception (i.It included their examination as external products (realised in the sensuously perceived material) of the real force of thought. of course. Lenin as a consistent materialist could not agree. however. because they were thought itself. It is very indicative. With that.e. as it were. judgments. was interpreted as alienated or estranged (embodied) thought that has not yet arrived at itself. deductions and inferences. Here we come up against the extreme expression. according to which the whole world. only embodied not in words.) sensibly opposed to the individual consciousness. events. and conclusions. and not only the cognitive faculties. of Hegel’s absolute idealism. etc.

generally accepted at the time. leaving the most acute problems as regards world outlook beyond its limits. in demonstrating just why. The fact is that the Kantian conception of logic. this problem appeared more and more clearly to him to be ‘very important’. i. and perhaps the most important of all. philosophical. And it was in fact
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. each time becoming more and more definite and categorical. for theoretical knowledge and solution. This is in general a very important question. The Kantian theory of knowledge defined the limits of the competence of science in general. and declaring them ‘transcendental’ for logical thought. as part of the theory of knowledge. But in this case the union of scientific investigation and faith in the corpus of a world outlook would be not only permissible but necessary. in circles as it were.’ We have succeeded. why Lenin’s thought returned to it again and again. in the course of Lenin’s reading of Hegel’s logic. by no means remained an abstract. it seems. theoretical construction.e.knowledge.

or about love of the human race being preferable to hatred of it. according to Bernstein. was not strictly scientific because it was marred by foggy Hegelian dialectics) with ‘ethical values’ and undemonstrable and irrefutable faith in the transcendental postulates of the ‘good’. The harm of the Kantian idea of uniting science with a system of ‘higher’ ethical values consisted in principle in its orienting theoretical
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.under the banner of Kantianism that the revisionist stream (the principles of which had been laid down by Eduard Bernstein and Conrad Schmidt) surged forward in the socialist movement. and so on and so forth. The harm done to the working class movement by the propagation of ‘higher values’ was not. of ‘conscience’ of ‘love of one’s neighbour’ and of the whole ‘human race’ without exception. The Kantian theory of knowledge was directly oriented here on ‘uniting’ ‘rigorous scientific thought’ (the thinking of Marx and Engels. the talk about conscience being good and lack of conscience bad. of course.

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. led to the decisive. economic relations between people that form the foundation of the whole pyramid of social relations. derivative defects of the capitalist system in its secondary. It plotted its own. morally interpretable policies. The orientation of theoretical thought not on the logic of Capital but on moral-fictional harping on the secondary. which were interesting but absolutely useless (if not harmful) to the working class movement.thought itself along lines other than those along which the teaching of Marx and Engels had been developed. Kantian strategy of scientific research for social-democratic theoreticians and confused ideas on the main line of development of theoretical thought and on the lines along which theoretical solution of the real problems of modern times could and should be sought. superstructural storeys. and social psychology of the Berdyaev kind. but to elaborating of far-fetched ‘ethical’ constructions. The Kantian theory of knowledge turned theoretical thinking not to analysis of the material. and to other things.

e. it inevitably degenerated into a superficial classificatory description of contemporary economic phenomena. In this respect the fate of Rudolf Hilferding and H. into an apologia. as regards its method of thinking and logic of investigation.. Marx’s Capital. with a quite different way of thinking. into a quite uncritical acceptance of them. Renner’s philosophical credo was as follows: ‘. i.dominant trends of the new. the Bible of right-wing socialism. and a manner of exposition not worked
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. but rather because of a petty-bourgeois class orientation and a false epistemological position. with vulgar positivist epistemology. Insofar as they tried to develop Marx’s political economy by means of the ‘latest’ logical devices. rather than of dialectics.. which was already linked. written in an age far removed from us. This path led directly to Karl Renner and his Theory of the Capitalist Economy. C. Cunow was very characteristic. not because they lacked talent. imperialist stage of the development of capitalism escaping the notice of the theoreticians of the Second International. W.

despite all its absolute idealism. the first section of Marx’s principal work presents sheer insuperable difficulty. From the middle of the nineteenth century bourgeois philosophy frankly moved ‘back to Kant’. Lenin saw that quite clearly. and further back to Hume and Berkeley. and Hegel’s logic. with every new decade increases the reader’s difficulties. Science today no longer proceeds deductively (not only in research but also in presentation).. Marx came from a very philosophical age. For an age that is so accustomed to think and to read. The style of writing of the German philosophers has become foreign to us.’ The orientation on ‘modern science’ and the modern way of thinking’. turned into an orientation on the idealistic and agnostic vogue interpretations of I modern science’.out to the end. already begun with Bernstein. but rather inductively.. it starts ‘from experimentally established facts.. on Humean-Berkeleian and Kantian epistemology. was more and more clearly
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. systematises them and so by degrees arrives at the level of abstract concepts.

and the slogan ‘Back to Kant’ was imperiously dictated by the fear aroused in the bourgeoisie’s ideologists by the social perspectives opened up from the heights of the dialectical view of thought. But. that of a materialist reworking of his achievements. and scientific consciousness. because of certain circumstances lying outside science. Lenin repeatedly stressed that it was only possible to move forward from Hegel along one line and one line only. knowledge.depicted as the pinnacle of the development of all pre-Marxian philosophy in the field of logic understood as the theory of the development of scientific knowledge. From the moment the materialist view of history appeared. as the theory of knowledge. It was closed to bourgeois philosophy. Hegel was seen by bourgeois consciousness as none other than the spiritual father’ of Marxism. only Marx and Engels had been able to take that line. That had a considerable grain
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. because Hegel’s absolute idealism had really exhausted all the possibilities of idealism as a principle for understanding thought.

understood as the principles of man’s rational attitude to the world. dialectics. creative power of its principles. began to join sides with him more and more just at that point where the idealism seemed in fact to become absolute? For surely the conception of logic as a science embracing in its principles not only human thought but also the real world outside consciousness was linked with panlogism. with the interpretation of the forms and laws of the real world as alienated forms of thought. Why then did Lenin. while fighting Hegel’s absolute idealism.of truth. and demonstrated not only the constructive. too. for Marx and Engels had disclosed the genuine sense of Hegel’s main achievement. destructive force. but also their revolutionary. and thought itself as the absolute force and power organising the world? The fact is that Hegel was and remains the sole thinker before Marx who consciously introduced practice into logic with full rights as the criterion both of truth and of the correctness
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.

in the course of checking its results through direct contact with ‘things in themselves’. Marx. Is that Hegel’s idea? It is necessary to return to this.6 And returning to it. In Hegel logic became identified with the theory of knowledge precisely because man’s practice (i. The practice of man and of mankind is the test. consequently. .. . and quite categorically: ‘. physical material was brought into the logical process as a phase. Lenin traced the development of Hegel’s corresponding ideas with special scrupulousness. . he wrote confidently.e. clearly sides with Hegel in introducing the
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. realisation of the aims of the ‘spirit’ in sense objects. in Hegel practice serves as a link in the analysis of the process of cognition. according to Hegel) truth. in natural. ‘. Undoubtedly. the criterion of the objectivity of cognition. and indeed as the transition to objective ("absolute". was looked upon as thought in its external revelation. symbolic explication of his psychic states.’ he wrote.of the operations that man performs in the sphere of the verbal.

. of the development of the entire concrete content of the world and of its cognition. and then it turned out that the ‘things in themselves’ were subordinated to the dictates of thinking man and obediently moved and changed according to laws and schemas dictated by his thought.. Logic consequently proved to be precisely a theory of knowledge of things also. but of the laws of development "of all material.’ In appearing as a practical act thought included things outside consciousness in its movement. and not solely a theory of the self-knowledge of the spirit. Lenin wrote: ‘Logic is the science not of external forms of thought. but also the world of ‘things in themselves’.
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. i. i.criterion of practice into the theory of knowledge: see the Theses on Feuerbach. the conclusion of the History of knowledge of the world. natural and spiritual things". Formulating the rational kernel’ of Hegel’s conception of the subject matter of logic.e. Thus not only did the ‘spirit’ move according to logical schemas. the sum-total.e.

the pure concept. but reworked it materialistically. and furthermore no such a conception of the subject matter of logic in Hegel himself.There is no such a formulation. Here it is: ‘The indispensable basis. In this passage Lenin did not simply translate Hegel’s thought ‘into his own words’. that is. between a concept and its respective reality. which is the very core of objects9 their very life-pulse. as it is the core
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. the Concept. as in using the word Thought one can abstract from the idea-this cannot be regarded as a merely indifferent form which is attached to some content. are yet such as to possess manifold determinations and to contain the distinction between Soul and Body. But these thoughts of all natural and spiritual things [Only these words are found in Lenin’s formulation-EVI] even the substantial content. the Universal. Hegel’s own text. in which Lenin discovered the ‘rational kernel’ of his conception of logic. the deeper basis is the soul in itself. which is Thought itself-in so far. does not sound at all like that.

and could not even be. since the latter were considered moments of the logical process.and pulse of subjective thinking itself. formulated. because there is nothing in Hegel about the development of natural things. Hegel’s logic is also his theory of knowledge for the reason that the science thought was inferred by him from an investigation of the history of the spirit’s self-knowledge. this is our problem. It would therefore be a gross error to think that the definition of logic as the science of the laws of development of all material and spiritual things is only Hegel’s idea transmitted by Lenin. by him in the course of a critical reading of Hegel’s words.
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. To bring into clear consciousness this logical character which gives soul to mind and stirs and works in it. or even simply cited by him. It is nothing of the sort.’ The difference between Hegel’s formulation and Lenin’s is one of principle. and thus of the world of natural things. it is Lenin’s own idea.

In no case. from the process in the course of which thinking man (or rather humanity) cognises and transforms the material world.e. logic and the theory of knowledge were two different sciences. because the forms themselves of the activity of the ‘spirit’ — the categories and schemas of logic — are inferred from investigation of the history of humanity’s knowledge and practice. but for quite another reason. Logic is also the theory of knowledge of Marxism. according to Lenin. definition of the tasks of a theory of knowledge inevitably leads to one version or another of the Kantian conception. From that standpoint logic also cannot be anything else than a theory explaining the universal schemas of the development of knowledge and of the material world by social man.schemas of thought. The logical determinations of thought therefore included
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. concepts. any other. As such it is also a theory of knowledge. alienated in natural material. Even less could logic be defined as part of the theory of knowledge. i.

exclusively
universal
categories
and
laws
(schemas) of the development of the objective world in general cognised in the course of the millennia of the development of scientific culture and tested for objectivity in the crucible of social man’s practice. however ‘closely linked’ with one another. the materialist theory of knowledge) was fully merged without residue in dialectics. but ‘the essence of the matter’.e. and logic was a systematic. one in subject matter and its stock of concepts. and laws of development of nature and of society. Lenin stressed. Being reflected in social consciousness. unless logic was
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. logic (i. was not ‘an aspect of the matter’. and of thought itself. they functioned as active logical forms of the work of thought. In this conception. schemas common to both natural and socio-historical development. theoretical depiction of the universal schemas. however. in mankind’s spiritual culture. And once more t ere were not two sciences. forms. In other words. but one and the same science. And this.

So logic (the theory of knowledge) and dialectics. because
categories as schemas of the synthesis of experimental data in concepts had a quite objective significance. full coincidence of subject matter and stock of categories. In the one and in the other it was a matter of universal forms and laws of development in general that were reflected in consciousness precisely in the shape of logical forms and laws of of thought through And the determination categories. just as logic (the theory of knowledge) had no object of a study that would differ in any way from the subject matter of dialectics. Dialectics had no subject matter distinct from that of the theory of knowledge (logic). i. the same significance also attached to the ‘experience’ processed with their aid. to science.e. the scientific outlook. the scientific picture of the world.
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. were in a relationship of full identity. it could not be truly understood. according to Lenin.understood simultaneously as the theory of knowledge.

and devoted
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. In the light of the foregoing. and the theory of knowledge of modern materialism. not to speak of other Marxists. That categorical conclusion.’ Lenin wrote in is notes ‘On the Question of Dialectics’. must not be considered as a phrase dropped by chance. however. merged with it. and logic and the theory of knowledge into special sciences connected with dialectics but not. ‘This is the "aspect" of the matter (it is not "an aspect" but the essence of the matter) to which Plekhanov.‘Dialectics is the theory of knowledge of (Hegel and) Marxism. hardly admitting of any other interpretation than a literal one. in which he summed up the vast job he had done in several years of hard work on critically reworking the Hegelian conception of logic in a materialist way. logic. paid no attention’. but as a real resume of all Lenin’s understanding of the problem of the relationship of dialectics. attempts to interpret their relation in the body of Marxism in such a way that dialectics is transformed into a special category treating ‘pure forms of being’.

is based on a simple misunderstanding. on neglect of the fact that the ‘specific nature’ of the forms and laws of thought consists precisely in their universality. logic
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. and of any theoretician. including the logician by profession. but only in those universal (invariant) forms and laws within which the thinking of any person flows.exclusively to the ‘specific’ forms of the reflexion of this ontology in men’s consciousness-the one (epistemology) being devoted to the ‘specific’ forms of knowledge and the other (logic) to the ‘specific’ forms of discursive thought-proved to be bankrupt (and in no way linked with Lenin’s conception). who specially thinks about thought. Logic as a science is not at all interested in the specific features’ of the thinking of the physicist or chemist. economist or linguist. The idea whereby logic is distinguished from dialectics as the particular from the general and therefore studies just that ‘specific feature’ of thought from which dialectics digresses. therefore. From the angle of materialism.

e. in fact ignores the historically formed division of labour between logic and psychology. and is thus the science of the universal forms and patterns of thought and reality. so that the statement that logic must study the ‘ specific forms’ of the movement of thought as well as the universal ones (common to thought and being).
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. because logic. To understand logic as a science distinguished from dialectics though closely connected with it) means to understand both logic and dialectics incorrectly. and not in a materialist way.also investigates forms and laws that equally govern both thinking about the external world and thinking about thought itself. is inevitably converted into a description of purely subjective methods and operations. and therefore ceases to be an objective science. depriving psychology of its subject matter. and on the peculiarities of the material. and throwing onto logic a task that is too much for it. artificially separated from dialectics. of forms of activities depending on the will and consciousness of people. i.

while dialectics is transformed into a dead scheme. in the form of ‘world schematics’ is just as inevitably converted into extremely general statements about everything on earth and not about anything in particular (something of the sort of that ‘everything in nature and society is interconnected’. But it is clear that such a formal superimposition of the general onto the particular does not deepen our understanding of either the general or the particular by a single jot. Dialectics. is tacked on to the real process of cognition in a purely formal way. Lenin therefore quite justly considered the transformation of dialectics into a sum of examples as the inevitable consequence of not understanding it as the logic and theory of knowledge of materialism. through examples ‘confirming’ one and the same general proposition over and over again. understood so.
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.While dialectics. or that everything develops’ and even ‘through contradictions’. counterposed to the process of the development of knowledge (thought). and so on). in the form of a doctrine about ‘the world as a whole’.

does not depend on the will and consciousness of people. The sequence of the development of the categories in the body of a theory has an objective character. logic is a rigorously defined system of special concepts (logical categories) reflecting the stages (‘steps’) consecutively passed through in the formation of any concrete whole (or correspondingly of the process of its mental-theoretical reproduction). Logical categories are thus directly stages in distinguishing the world. the objective sequence of the real historical ‘process. i. In explaining this view Lenin remarked on the general sequence of the development of
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. purged of its disruptive fortuities and of the historical form. i. in the form of which. It is dictated primarily by the objective sequence of the development of empirically based theoretical knowledge. either objective or subjective. is reflected in people’s consciousness. takes place. and nodal points helping to cognise and master it.Being the science of the universal forms and patterns within which any process.e. of cognising it.e.

" The movement of scientific cognition. Such is the course also of natural science and political economy (and history). stages. Not only do the determinations of each of the logical categories therefore have an
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.logical categories: ‘First of all impressions flash by.. Logical categories are stages (steps) in cognition developing the object in its necessity. Lenin said. in the natural sequence of the phases of its own formation. was the nub. etc. from subject to object.’ ‘Such is actually the general course of all human cognition (of all science) in general. processes) of cognition move . being tested in practice and arriving through this test at truth. All these moments (steps. After that study and reflection direct thought to the cognition of identity — difference -Ground — Essence versus phenomenoncausality.. and not at all man’s technical devices imposed on the subject like a child’s bucket on sandpies. then Something emerges-afterwards the concepts of quality (the determination of the thing or the phenomenon) and quantity are developed.

Lenin noted: ‘If Marx did not leave behind him a Logic (with a capital ‘L’).objective character. on an objective basis.e. before and independently of the scientific determination of identity and difference. determine the object and not simply the form of subjective activity. and this ought to be utilised to the full in this question. etc. and just as it is impossible to understand the complex compounds of organic chemistry while their constituent chemical elements are unknown (not identified by analysis).. he did leave the logic of Capital. but the sequence in which the categories appear in the theory of thought also has the same necessary character. It is impossible to determine necessity or purpose strictly scientifically. one can only distinguish the logical categories underlying the theory of
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. In outlining a plan for systematic treatment of the categories of logic. quality and measure. i. just as it is impossible to understand capital and profit scientifically unless their ‘simple components’ — commodity and money have previously been analysed.’ Moreover.

] of its individual parts. a relation encountered billions of times. viz.political economy from the movement of the theory by basing oneself on the best (dialectical) traditions in the development of logic as a science. without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic. and especially its first chapter. most ordinary and fundamental.
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. from its beginning to its end. ‘It is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital. most common and everyday relation of bourgeois (commodity) society. In this very simple phenomenon (in this "cell" of bourgeois society) analysis reveals all the contradictions (or the germs of all the contradictions) (both of and modern society. the exchange of commodities. of The these subsequent exposition shows us the development growth movement) contradictions and of this society in the Š [summation Ed. ‘Marx first analyses the simplest.’ Lenin wrote further.’ ‘In his Capital.

10: Contradiction as a Category of Dialectical Logic Contradiction as the concrete unity of mutually exclusive opposites is the real nucleus of dialectics. on dialectics as the logic of thinking. but no small difficulty immediately arises as soon as matters touch on ‘subjective dialectics’. If any object is a living contradiction. its central category. On that score the cannot be two views among Marxists. in what form? Contradiction in the theoretical determinations of an object is above all a fact that
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. what must the thought (statement about the object) be that expresses it? Can and should an objective contradiction find reflection in thought? And if so.

The contradiction is in the object but must not be in the ideas about it. in agreement with dialectics. to the very process of thought. The point that they dispute is something else.
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. however. into the supreme principle of logic. Such logicians are occasionally prepared even to recognise that the object can. be by itself inwardly contradictory.is constantly being reproduced by the movement of science. in relation to the logical process. The principle of contradiction is transformed into an absolute. into an indisputable a priori canon. can there be a to contradiction in true. still cannot permit himself in any way to recognise the truth of the law that constitutes the nucleus of dialectics. and is not denied by dialectics or by materialists or idealists. which amounts to their identity. The metaphysician. correct thought? The metaphysical logician tries demonstrate the inapplicability of the dialectical law of the coincidence or concurrence of opposites. formal criterion of truth. namely: what is the relationship of the contradiction in thought to the object? In other words.

Any science. he says. thinking without knowing or desiring to know any other logic than formal logic) finally became caught up in the logical contradictions it had brought to light just because it persistently and consistently observed the ban
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. but in dialectics there is an opposite tendency. The view under consideration is based on a misunderstanding. and something that must be got rid of somehow or other? The metaphysician in logic interprets similar moments in the development of science in such a way. which holds that any contradiction in thought is inadmissible. Science. or rather simply on ignorance of the important historical fact that dialectics was born just where metaphysical thought (i. In that case does it not act in accordance with the recipes of metaphysics. always strives to resolve it. which it is difficult to call other than eclectic. when it comes up against a contradiction in determinations of an object.Some logicians strive to substantiate this position.e. always strives to avoid contradictions. by citing the practice of science.

It is irrational to see the cause of the illness in the coming of the doctor. so that it is stupid to accuse it of an itch to pile up contradictions. as we know. the history of the disintegration of the Ricardian school and the rise of Marx’s economic theory. The way out of the blind alley of the theoretical paradoxes and antinomies into which the Ricardian school had got was found.on any kind of contradiction whatsoever in determinations. in fact. just why is it? Let us turn to the analysis of a striking example. And if it is successful. The question can only be whether dialectics is successful in curing the contradictions into which thought falls. and rationally’ resolved only by means of dialectical logic. a typical case of how mountains of logical contradictions have been piled up just by means of absolutised formal logic.
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. We have in mind the history of political economy. Dialectics as logic is the means of resolving these contradictions. as a result of a most rigorous metaphysical diet that unconditionally forbids any contradiction.

But profit was also value. did that tie
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. the antinomy of the law of value and the law of the average rate of profit. That Ricardo’s theory contained a mass of logical contradictions was not discovered by Marx at all. the most typical and acute. and McCulloch. however. David Ricardo’s law of value established that living human labour was the sole source and substance of value. through the law of value. But only Marx was able to understand the real character of the contradictions of the labour theory of value.e. an affirmation that was an enormous advance on the road to objective truth.only by Karl Marx. or rather part of it. In trying to express it theoretically. How. Let us. i. and was found precisely by means of dialectics as logic. and Proudhon. a clear logical contradiction was obtained. That was an indisputably true analytical determination. consider one of them. newly created value. It was plainly seen by Malthus. and Sismondi. following Marx. But only new labour produced new value. The point was that profit was new.

up with the quite obvious empirical fact that the quantity of profit was not determined at all by the quantity of living labour expended on its production? It depended exclusively on the quantity of capital as a whole. which established that only living labour produced new value. and had landed in a logical
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. and in no case on the size of that part that went on wages. both laws determined one and the same object (profit). And it was even more paradoxical that the higher the profit the less living labour was consumed during its production. Nevertheless. This antinomy was noted with spiteful delight in his day by Malthus. Here then was a problem that it was impossible to resolve on the principles of formal logic. In Ricardo’s theory the law of the average rate of profit. mutually exclusive contradiction. stood in a relation of direct. which established the dependence of the scale of profit on the quantity of-capital as a whole. And if thought had arrived here at an antinomy. and the law of value.

profit was impossible in principle.contradiction. If the law of value was universal. Ricardo.e. Both knew only the Lockian theory of understanding and the logic (and that formal) corresponding to it. the creator of the labour theory of value. was primarily concerned with the accord were subsumed without
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. the law of its own particular existence. By its existence it refuted the abstract universality of the law of value. As soon as one tried to treat profit theoretically (i. to understand it through the law of value). it was difficult to blame dialectics for it. It was found that there was in fact no such relationship between the law of value and the forms of its manifestation. and the only ones. This logic justified a general law (in this case the law of value) only when it was demonstrated as an immediately general empirical rule under which all facts whatsoever contradiction. it suddenly proved to be an absurd contradiction. Neither Ricardo nor Malthus had any idea of dialectics. Its canons were indisputable for them.

the general law of value stood in a relation of mutually exclusive
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. but rather agreement of the developed theoretical determinations with the requirements of formal logical consistence. logical consistence. When Ricardo’s disciples and successors no longer made correspondence of theory to the object their chief concern. The disintegration of the Ricardian school "therefore" begins with him.of the theoretical statements with the object. and the latter. and even cynically. expressed the real state of affairs. which bourgeois theoreticians regarded as evidence of the weakness and incompleteness of his theory. riddled with unresolvable antagonisms.’ In fact. the labour theory of value began to disintegrate. as Marx showed. and logical contradictions. was evidence rather of the contrary. He soberly. was naturally presented in thought as a system of conflicts. antagonisms. with the canons of the formal unity of theory. This circumstance. of its strength and objectivity. Marx wrote of James Mill: ‘What he tries to achieve is formal.

they continued trying to make value and profit agree directly and without contradiction. and so on. But when. ‘much more difficult to solve than that of squaring the circle. in trying to subsume the one law directly and immediately under the other. And it was not surprising that.. with the law of the average rate of profit. they then obtained a problem that was. And he naturally seeks a solution of the paradox by way of a purely formal analysis of the theory. A propos of this approach to solving the problem Marx wrote: "Here the
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... nevertheless. a logical contradiction was obtained. in Marx’s words. inevitably interprets it as the result of mistakes committed earlier in thought. The metaphysically thinking theoretician. by making the concepts more precise.contradiction with the empirical form of its own manifestation. It is simply an attempt to present that which does not exist as in fact existing’. in the working out and formulation of the universal law. That was a real contradiction of a real object. corning up against such a paradox. by correcting expressions.

. In fact. which are not resolved in a real way. because real contradictions.)’ When the general law contradicts the empirically common position of things the empiricist immediately sees the way out in altering the formulation of the general law in such a fashion that the empirically general will be directly subsumed under it.contradiction between the general law and further developments in the concrete circumstances is to be resolved not by the discovery of the connecting links but by directly subordinating and immediately adapting the concrete to the abstract. At first glance that is how it ought to be. they are "verbal". This moreover is to be brought about by a verbal fiction. however. are to be solved by phrases. then the thought should be altered so as to bring it into line with the general phenomena immediately given on the surface. and by taking it the Ricardian school arrived at complete rejection of the labour
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. (These are indeed "verbal disputes". by changing vera rerum vocabula. if thought contradicts the facts. this is theoretically false.

and the metaphysics that made it an absolute. each of which was. The second way was to represent the internal contradiction.theory of value. as an external contradiction of two things. That. state of affairs. brought about loss of the concept of value. Profit could not be explained
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. which toils painfully to deduce undeniable empirical phenomena by simple formal abstraction directly from the general law. noncontradictory. in itself. a procedure known as reducing the internal contradiction to a contradiction ‘in different relations or at a different time’. express thinking as a logical contradiction. but the crude empiricism was inevitably converted into a ‘false metaphysics. empirically obvious. as we have seen. The first was to adjust the general law to the directly general. Formal logic. knew only two ways of resolving contradictions in thought. scholasticism. The general law revealed by Ricardo was sacrificed to crude empeiria (experience). It was done as follows. or to show by cunning argument that they are in accordance with that law’.

Because theory in general existed only where there was a conscious and principled striving to understand all the separate phenomena as necessary and the same general. It was necessary role of land. land-rent.
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.from value without contradiction? Well. labour-wages’. So the triune formula of vulgar economics ‘Capitalinterest. what of it! There was no need to persist in a one-sided approach. it is true. The conclusion was obvious. The point. they said. had disappeared the theoretical approach to things in general. too. and of machines. There was no logical contradiction there. many other account. and of demand. one must admit that profit originated in reality not only from labour but also from many other factors. lay not in the contradictions but in the fullness. and of many. not every means of resolving the contradictions led to development of the theory. The two ways outlined above signified a solution such as was identical with converting the theory into empirical eclecticism. but with it. it had disappeared.

What did his dialectical materialist method of resolving the antinomy consist in? First of all.e. The only theoretician who succeeded in resolving -the logical contradictions of the Ricardian theory so as to bring about not disintegration but real development of the labour theory of value was’ of course. or of inexactitudes in determinations. Karl Marx. reads: ‘However that may be. the outcome is that surplus-value springs
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. variable capital. The ‘proposition in the third volume. i. in this instance the substance of value. of living human labour. we must state that the real contradictions discovered by Ricardo did not disappear in Marx’s system. it is demonstrated that surplus value is exclusively the product of that part of capital which is expended on wages and converted into living labour. Furthermore.concrete substance. however. for example. they were presented in it as necessary contradictions of the object itself. and not at all as the result of mistakenness of the idea. In the first volume of Capital.

after the appearance of the third volume of Capital.’ Between the first and the second propositions a whole system was developed. On the contrary. there was preserved a relationship of mutually exclusive contradiction banned by formal logic. and the contradiction just between a them whole does chain not of disappear because
mediating links has been developed between them. The general is thus also contradicted in Capital by its own particular manifestation. a whole chain of connecting links. that the antinomy of the labour theory of value remained unresolved by him and that the whole of Capital was consequently nothing more than speculative. nevertheless. that Marx had not fulfilled his pledge. dialectical hocus-pocus. this actually demonstrates that the antinomies of the labour theory of value are not logical ones at all but real contradictions
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. That is why vulgar economists triumphantly declared.simultaneously from all portions of the invested capital. between them.

In what. and for that reason was untrue. though not understood by him. In other words. So let us compare how the metaphysician Ricardo and the dialectician Marx understood value. developing system includes contradictions as the principle of its self-movement and as the form in which the development is cast. then. was incomplete. any concrete. And there is nothing surprising in that. they are preserved but have lost the character of logical contradictions. and on the other was formal. His abstraction of value . Ricardo.in the object. i. did not analyse value by its form. correctly expressed by Ricardo. of course. did Marx see the fullness and pithiness of the analysis of value that was missing in Ricardo?
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.e. and more but prove to be understood. In Capital these antinomies are not done away with at all as something a deeper subjective. have been sublated in the body of concrete theoretical conception. having been converted into abstract moments of the concrete conception of economic reality. on the one hand.

Value was represented as the substance-subject of all the developed forms and categories of political economy. and with that conscious dialectics in this science began. he (to use an expression from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind) understood value not only as substance but also as subject. In exchange. i.First. value is only manifested. Ricardo showed value only from the aspect of its substance.
in
value
being
a
living
concrete
contradiction. First of all it investigates the direct. As for Marx. is only expressed. in the course of which one commodity is replaced by another. took labour as the substance of value.e. It is manifested as follows: one commodity plays the
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. Because the ‘subject’ in Marx’s conception (in this case he employed the terminology of the Phenomenology of Mind) is reality developing through its own internal contradictions. moneyless exchange or barter of commodity for commodity. and in no case is it created. But let us look a little closer at Marx’s analysis of value.

Value itself still remains a mysterious and theoretically unexpressed essence of each of the commodities. On the surface of phenomena it really appears as if two abstract. one-sided forms of its revelation are visible. The passage cited crowns the analysis of the form of the revelation of value. ‘In one expression of value. the role of equivalent. counterposed to it.’ The metaphysician will no doubt be delighted to read that two mutually exclusive economic Marx was forms cannot the simultaneously possibility of be the combined in one commodity! But can one say that refuting coincidence of mutually exclusive determinations in the object and in its conception? Rather the contrary. It is a third something. something lying deeper. These forms are polar opposites. or with their simple. with value as such. one commodity cannot simultaneously appear in both forms. But value itself does not coincide with either of these forms. The fact is that we are not yet concerned with the concept of value. and the other. In
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.role of relative value. are mutually exclusive. mechanical unity.

for example. From the concrete standpoint each of the two commodities . and in that same relation it cannot be simultaneously an equivalent. so that we do not have two different relations. and from the position of the latter the relation under consideration proves directly the opposite. the very form in which the latter can no longer be because it is in the relative form. But matters appear so only from an abstract. but one concrete objective relation.also mutually serves as the material in which it is measured. a mutual relation of two commodity owners.relation to its owner. In other words the exchange really being completed presupposes that each of the two commodities mutually related in it
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. one-sided angle. In other words each mutually presupposes that the equivalent form of value is realised in the other commodity. For the owner of linen is absolutely equal to the owner of a coat. linen as a commodity appears only in the relative form of value.linen and coat mutually measures the other’s value and .

And if. exchange simply cannot take place. both measuring its own value and serving as the material for expressing the value of the other commodity. that means that the two polarly excluded forms of value are combined in each of the two commodities. then.simultaneously takes on both economic forms of the revelation of value in itself. within one and the same relation in both mutually exclusive forms of the expression of value. each of the commodities is simultaneously and. How can he say that two polar forms of the expression of value cannot be combined in one commodity. If the two commodities do not mutually recognise each other as equivalents. if. however. from the abstract. and functions as relative value in one relation and as equivalent in the other. i. exchange does take place. is that Marx contradicts himself. What you get. from the concrete aspect. and then state that in real exchange they are all the same so combined? The answer is
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. one-sided point of view.e. in fact. says the metaphysician. each of them is only in one form. moreover.

’
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. ‘has an outward and visible counterpart. as analysis shows. and shows it to be untrue. the relation in which the commodity whose value is to be expressed counts only as use-value. Something else is discovered in the form of the contradiction under consideration. the inner contradiction of value and use-value. therefore.that concrete examination of things refutes the result obtained by the abstract. whereas the commodity in terms of which value is to be expressed counts only as exchange-value. ‘Thus the contrast between use-value and value hidden away within the commodity. namely the relation between two commodities. one-sided approach to them. its value. and that is the absolute content of each of the commodities. The truth of commodity exchange is just that a relation is realised in it that is absolutely impossible from the angle of an abstract.’ Marx wrote. onesided view. the simple phenomenal form of the inherent contrast (within the commodity) between use-value and value. The simple value form of a commodity is.

outwardly revealed through the relation to another commodity. sees in it a false theoretical expression and strives to turn the internal contradiction into an external contradiction of two things. each of which. in his view. is internally non-contradictory. In philosophical terms. He showed hat the inner contradiction hidden in each of the interrelated things in a contradiction of an external order. in the statement of a thing.From the aspect of logic this point is extraordinarily instructive. As a result value was presented as an inner relation of a commodity to itself. into a contradiction ‘in various relations or at a different time’. coming up against the fact of the coincidence of contradictory determinations in a concept. the external contradiction was presented only as a phenomenon and the relation to the other commodity (as mediated
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. Marx acted quite the contrary. The other commodity played only the role of a mirror in which the inwardly contradictory nature of the commodity that expressed its value was reflected. The metaphysician.

For him a contradiction in ‘one relation’ is an index of the abstractness of knowledge. the relation to itself. its own relation to itself. For Marx. and an external contradiction is a synonym of the ‘concreteness’ of knowledge. Dialectics obliges one always to see. behind a thing’s relation to another thing.through this relation) as the relation of the commodity to itself. instead of the contradiction itself. its own inner relation. and so on. it was an index of the one-sidedness and superficiality of knowledge when an object was presented in thought simply as an external contradiction. signifying that only the outward form of the manifestation of an internal contradiction had been caught. The difference between dialectics and metaphysics does not consist at all in the former’s
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. an index of the confusion of different planes of abstraction. The inner relation. was also value as the absolute economic content of each of the mutually related commodities. on the contrary. The metaphysician always strives to reduce the internal relation to an external one.

Dialectics by no means reduces the one to the other. And this essence is value. Metaphysics really always tries to reduce the inner contradiction to a contradiction ‘in different relations’. The immediate coincidence of mutually exclusive economic determinations (value and use-value) in each of the two commodities meeting in exchange is also the true theoretical expression of the essence of simple commodity exchange. however. It recognises the objectivity of both. but in deriving the former from the latter and thus comprehending the one and the other in their objective necessity. The point. denying it objective significance.recognising only inner contradictions and the latter’s recognising only external ones. does not lie in reducing an external contradiction to an inner one. Dialectics moreover does not deny the fact that an inner contradiction always appears in phenomena as an external one. From the logical aspect the concept of value (in contrast to the outward form of its manifestation in the act of exchange) is characterised by its being presented
465
.

But it did happen somehow. the direct or immediate identification of opposites.as an immediate contradiction. and consequently both polar forms of value were somehow combined in each
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. logical) reason. And value therefore remained. Thus. without collisions. i. in the two polar forms of expression of value. and consequently real exchange by value was impossible. without conflicts. what was effected in the real act of exchange was impossible from the angle of abstract (formal. without contradictions and crises. within the limits of the simple commodity form. In it the commodity had to be. This was the theoretical expression of the real fact that direct commodity exchange could not be completed smoothly. yet could not be. as the direct coincidence of two forms of economic existence that are polar opposites. an unresolved and unresolvable antinomy. namely.e. value. The point was that direct commodity exchange was not in a position to express the socially necessary measure of the expenditure of labour in the various branches of social production.

467
. There was no way out of the antinomy. Exchange became not direct and unmediated. Insofar as exchange through the market remained the sole and universal form of the social exchange of things. as it were. So money was born. but mediated-through money. and the coincidence of mutually exclusive economic forms in a commodity came to an end. Marx’s contribution was precisely that he understood that. since it was split into two ‘different relations’. the antinomy of value found its solution in the movement of the commodity market itself. already did not coincide immediately but were completed at a different time and in different parts of the market. mutually exclusive in their economic content. The market created the means for resolving its own contradictions. The two antinomic acts. into an act of sale (which transformed use-value into value) and an act of purchase (which converted value into use-value).commodity. and expressed it theoretically.

once again.’ says the commodity owner at times when this contradiction does not show on the surface. Both commodity and money were fraught. Money did not become absolutely pure value. but had only acquired a new form of expression. ‘The only money is commodities. thinking showed that the inner opposition of the economic determinations of
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. ‘The only commodity is money. In fact the antinomy had not disappeared at all. but concrete. though only from time to time.‘The antinomy seemed at first glance to be resolved by all the rules of formal logic. Marx’s theoretical. moreover.’ he asserts in a directly opposite way during a crisis. and the commodity thus pure use-value. precisely in crises. with an inner contradiction that was expressed. as before. the contradiction was unresolved and unresolvable. in thought in the form of a contradiction in determinations. refuting his own abstract statement. and revealed itself in the clearest way. and then making itself felt the more strongly. but the semblance was purely external. as before.

In theoretical determinations of money the antinomy of value brought out earlier was pre served. like the direct exchange of commodity for commodity. on the surface through a direct relation to another commodity of the same sort. although on the surface of phenomena it proved to be annulled. though. even when they were not manifested in an obvious. in them it formed the ‘simple essence’ both of commodities and of money. which was no longer revealed. and consequently also in theoretical determinations of the one and of the other. But these relations. the contradiction seemed resolved once and for all. but through its
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. value remained an internally contradictory relation of a commodity to itself. As before.money existed at every fleeting second. formed on inner unity that was preserved in all its acuteness and tension in both commodities and Money. when everything was apparently going swimmingly and. broken down into two ‘different relations’. visible way but were hidden in commodities and in money.

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. The forming of the capitalist. mutually attracting and at the same time excluding each other. commodity system appears in Marx’s theoretical analysis as a complicating of the chain of connecting links through which the poles of value. Any concrete category was presented as a metamorphosis through which value and use-value passed during their reciprocal transformations into one another. have to pass. and more and more complicated. From that angle the whole logical structure of Capital was traced out from a new and very important aspect. and the tension between the poles increases. reciprocal transformation of the two originally exposed poles of the expression of value (value and usevalue) was effected. The path of the reciprocal transformation of value and use-value becomes longer and longer.relation to money. Money now functioned as the means by which the mutual.

And the movement of the investigating thought consisted in revealing this new reality that developed by virtue of the impossibility of resolving the objective contradiction originally disclosed. Within the limits of the simple form the antimony of value remained unresolved and fixed in thought as a contradiction in the concept.The relative and temporary resolution of the tension takes place through crises. and its final resolution is through socialist revolution. just as the commodity market found a relative resolution of its objective contradictions in the birth of money. In fact. Its sole true logical resolution consisted in tracing how it was resolved objectively in practice in the course of the movement itself of the commodity market. That approach to things immediately gave thought an orientation in the analysis of any form of economic relation.
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. so the theoretical determinations of money in Capital served as a means of relatively resolving the theoretical contradiction revealed in the analysis of the simple value form.

and if non-equivalents are exchanged. capital could not arise from circulation. If equivalents are exchanged. As Marx wrote: ‘Turn and twist as we may. Investigation of the commodity-money circulation led to an antinomy. the sum total remains the same. of a problem. Circulation. the exchange of commodities. in which thinking used empirical facts to find the conditions and data that were lacking for solution of a clearly formulated task. then no surplus value is created. does not create value.Thus the very course of theoretical thought became not a confused wandering but a rigorous purposive process. just as it could not arise outside it. Such are the conditions of the problem. still no surplus value is created. he concluded. Theory therefore appeared as a process of the constant resolution of problems pushed to the fore by the investigation of . It ‘must simultaneously take place in the sphere of circulation and outside the sphere of circulation. So. That is the nut we have to crack!’
472
.the empirical facts itself.

and whereby therefore value is created’. The solution of the question corresponds to the posing of it. higher. to find in the market. the peculiar quality of being a source of value. Objective reality always develops through the origin within it of a concrete contradiction that finds its resolution in the generation of a new. The problem arising in thought in the form of a contradiction in the determination could only be resolved if the theoretician (and the real owner of money) was ‘lucky enough to find somewhere within the sphere of circulation. following the development of the actual object. a commodity whose use-value has.Marx’s way of posing the problem was not at all fortuitous and was not simply a rhetorical device. a commodity whose actual consumption is a process whereby labour is embodied. When expressed in thought it naturally appears as a contradiction in the determinations of the
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. and more complex form of development. It was linked with the very essence of the dialectical method of developing theory. the contradiction is unresolvable.

For the real questions. higher form of development in which the initial contradiction finds its real. purposive examining of the facts. It was not fortuitous that the old logic passed this very important logical form over as a ‘question’. And that is not only correct.concept
that
reflects
the
initial
stage
of
development. new. moreover. The concrete contradiction that arises in thought also leads toward a further and. the real problems that arise in the movement of the investigating mind. actual. but by further investigating reality. although there is a contradiction in it. empirically established resolution. in the theoretical expression of the facts. A contradiction of that type in determinations is not resolved by way of refining the concept that reflects the given form of development. but is the sole correct form of movement of the investigating mind. by discovering another. always rise before thought in the form of contradictions in the determination. toward the finding and analysing of just those facts that are lacking for
474
.

which there must not be in a theoretical investigation. that goes as far as their identity. The latter is the field of dialectical logic. it is not what is called a logical contradiction. a coincidence.
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. It-is that which constitutes the real core of dialectics as the logic of thought that follows the development of reality. But there another law is dominant. though it has the formal signs of such but is a logically correct expression of reality. the logical contradiction.solving the problem and resolving the given theoretical contradiction. Formal analysis is also obliged to discover such contradictions in determinations. If a contradiction arises of necessity in the theoretical expression of reality from the very course of the investigation. moreover. and the principle of contradiction of formal logic applies fully to them. has to be recognised as a contradiction of terminological. Strictly speaking it relates to the use of terms and not to the process of the movement of a concept. On the contrary. the law of the unity or coincidence of opposites. semantic origin and properties.

to all individuals in the form of the limitless multitude of which the world within which we live and about which we speak presents itself to us at first glance.11: The Problem of the General in Dialectics The category of the general or universal occupies an extremely important place in the body of dialectical logic. What is the general or universal? Literally. i.e. That is 476
. it is relating to all. in the meaning of the word.

Without going into the philosophical disagreements about the general or universal. Any large dictionary (e. equally acceptable to everyone. the Shorter Oxford Dictionary) contains dozen meanings. and relates not only to different objects or meanings that do not coincide with one another. or like the velocity or speed of an electron and of a train) and cannot exist separately from the relevant individua in the form of a separate ‘thing’. and for what exists precisely outside the
477
. one can note that the term ‘common’ (or rather ‘general’ or universal’) is used very ambiguously in the living language. At the extremes of the spectrum. very likely. ‘Common’ is used even for two objects. moreover. there are meanings such as can scarcely be considered consistent or compatible. but also to directly opposite ones that a are mutually such exclusive. indeterminately. both for what appertains to each of them (like the biped nature or mortality of both Socrates and Caius.g. that can be said about the general. let alone all.all that isunquestionable.

whether or not it is possible to find something common between two extreme.e. one for two (or all)). a common (mutual) friend or acquaintance. obviously does not serve just for one and the same thing. moreover. or one and the same sign. namely a common ancestor. Whether one sees in that the imperfection of natural language or on the contrary considers it the superiority of the flexibility of a living language over the rigidity of the definitions of an artificial language. and so on and so forth.individua in the form of a special individuum. One and the same word. that is often encountered and therefore calls for explanation. But then the quite reasonable question arises. a common field (i. to find the basis of the fact of the divergence of meanings. mutually exclusive meanings of the world ‘common’ (or ‘general’) in the living language. equally sanctioned by usage. In the interpretation that is sanctioned as the ‘sole
478
. a common motor vehicle or entry. the fact itself remains a fact and one.

and only those. c. This relationship between the terms of natural language was once brought out by Ludwig Wittgenstein as quite typical in the following example: Churchill-A has a family likeness to Churchill-B in attributes a. d with Churchill-C. Churchill-D has only a single attribute in common with Churchill-A. Nevertheless. it is clear that here.correct one’ by the tradition of formal logic. however. all with equal right bear one and the same surname. c. while Churchill-E and Churchill-A have not a single one in common. cannot be reconstructed by abstracting those attributes. although they have nothing in common between them. The image of a common ancestor. like human relatives. Churchill-B shares attributes b. it is impossible to discover such a common attribute as would form part of the definition of two polar meanings of ‘common’ (‘general’). we are dealing with related words which. that are genetically preserved by all his (or her)
479
. as in many other cases. nothing except the name. b. of a progenitor.

both gangling and dwarfish. of course. But there is a community of name.
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. The original meaning of the word also cannot be established by a purely formal union of attributes. as a rule. into one class. and the problem consists in discovering among the existing separate individua the one that was born before the others and therefore could have given birth to all the rest. There simply are no such attributes. does not die but continues to live alongside all its offspring as an individuum among other individua. the analogy ends. The ancestor. and so on. because (to continue the analogy) Churchill-Alpha would have to be represented as an individuum who was simultaneously both brunette and blonde (notbrunette). uniting all the offspring-terms into one family. because the position with related terms is rather different. both snub-nosed and hook-nosed. recording a common origin.descendants. It is the same with ‘common’ (‘general’) as a term. But there.

and ash-grey locks. The latter
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. But it is just here that the two incompatible positions in logic.e. as an consequently. take shape-that of dialectics and the completely formal conception. representable
individuum of medium height with a straight nose. i. to ‘combine’ opposing determinations (if only potentially) in himself.Among the attributes of a common ancestor who continues to live among his descendants. i. Thus the colour grey can be fully represented as mixture of black and white.e. a capacity to give birth both to the gangling (in relation to itself) and the dwarfish (again in relation to itself). like a solution or mixture.e. directly opposite determinations in himself. one has to presuppose a capacity to give birth to something which is opposite to itself. as simultaneously white and black. and in understanding of the general (universal). There is nothing incompatible in that with the ‘common sense’ that Neopositivists like to enlist as an ally against dialectical logic. can The be common ancestor. to combine both the one and the other. i.

as they may be termed (though they are incorrectly thus distinguished). This is a profound observation.e. that we need look for no one soul in which all these are found. and in that connection he highly values Aristotle’s relevant statement: ‘As to what concerns more nearly the relation of the three souls. the principle of the genetic community of phenomena that are at first glance quite heterogeneous (insofar as no abstract. Similarly among figures only the triangle and the other
482
. by means of which truly speculative thought marks itself out from the thought which is merely logical and formal (my italics — EVI). i. It was thus that Hegel saw the point of departure of the paths of dialectical thought (in hi! terminology ‘speculative’) and purely formal thought. and which in a definite and simple form is conformable with any of them.has no desire to admit into logic the idea of development organically linked (both in essence and in origin) with the concept of substance. Aristotle says of them. with perfect truth. common attributes can be discovered among them).

’ If we look at the problem of the determination of the general as a universal (logical) category from this angle. in that by itself.
like
the
square. but-and this is Aristotle’s main contention-it is the truly universal figure [or rather the ‘figure in general’ — EVI]. etc. which appears also in the square.... Therefore. for what is common to them. without further change. on the one hand. but to a higher stage. the truly universal figure. etc. or at the
483
. are truly anything. a mere abstraction.. it constitutes its first species. the triangle is the first. On the other hand.. pentagon. and when further developed it belongs. as a particular figure.definite
figures.
the
parallelogram. Aristotle’s meaning is therefore this: an empty universal is that which does not itself exist. the triangle stands alongside of the square. the universal figure [or rather the ‘figure in general’ — EVI]. All that is universal is in fact real. etc. or is not itself species. as the figure which can be led back to the simplest determination. not to this.. is an empty thing of thought.

and cannot for the reason that there actually is no such thing. is by no means posited and expressed in an abstract attribute common to them. It is quite clear that the concrete (empirically obvious) essence of the link uniting the various individua in some ‘one’. there is some hope of resolving it. common element in every single representative of one class (all having one and the same name) yields nothing in this instance. The general in this sense cannot be found here. The stand of formal logic. oriented on finding the abstract. in a common multitude or plurality.problem of the theoretical reconstruction of the common ancestor of a family of related meanings seemingly having nothing in common. Rather such unity (or community) is created by the attribute that one individuum possesses and another does not. or in a determination that is equally proper to the one and the other. not in the form of attribute or determination actually common to all the individual in the form of a resemblance proper to each of them taken separately. And
484
.

the absence of a certain attribute binds one individuum to another much -more strongly than its equal existence in both. The universal is above all the regular connection of two (or more) particular individuals that converts them into moments of one and the same concrete. and the one would not need the other. etc. would be absolutely uninteresting to one another. habits. real unity. And it is much more reasonable to represent this unity as the aggregate of different. or totality as Marx preferred to call
485
. It is nothing but a simple doubling of solitariness. They would simply bore each other to death. each of which has the very same set of knowledge. Here the general functions as the law or principle of the connection of these details in the make-up of some whole. Two absolutely equal individuals. inclinations. The general is anything but continuously repeated similarity in every single object taken separately and represented by a common attribute and fixed by a sign. separate moments than as an indefinite plurality of units indifferent to one another..

something that was not originally intended at all. If we return to the question of the genetic community of the different (and opposing) meanings that the term ‘common’ or ‘general’ (‘universal’) has acquired in the evolution of the living language. incidentally.
favour of that view. and then to tracing why and how the initial meaning. Since it is difficult to suspect our remote ancestors of an inclination to invent ‘abstract objects’ and ‘constructions’. the problem seemingly boils down to recognising that among them which can confidently be considered as the progenitormeaning. Here analysis rather than abstraction is called for. Philological in provides evidence. ‘What would old Hegel say in the next world. was broadened so as to embrace something opposite.it. it is more logical (it would seem) to consider the original meaning the one that the term ‘common’ still preserves in such expressions as ‘common ancestor’ research and ‘common field’. following Hegel.’ Marx wrote with satisfaction
486
. first in time and immediately simple in essence.

Besondere. the separate. purely mental. as logos.
487
. and the particular. the universal in its original meaning appears distinctly in the mind. as Hegel would have said. whereby the universal is made a synonym of the idea. the isolated. On the contrary. Sundre.
‘if
he
heard
that
the
general
(Allgemeine) in German and Norse means nothing but the common land (Gemeinland).to
Engels. even a hint of the refined mysticism that permeates the corresponding views of Neoplatonists and medieval Christian scholasticism.’ It is quite understandable that if we have in mind here the originally simple. being considered from the very beginning as the word. the particular. ‘truly general’ meaning of the word. nothing but the separate property divided off from the common land? Here are the logical categories coming damn well out of "our intercourse" after all. spiritualised. then it is impossible to discover in the idea according to which the general (universal) precedes the individual. as something incorporeal. or exclusive. both in essence and in time.

One is forced to evaluate the identification of the universal with the idea (as the initial thesis of any system of philosophical idealism) as an axiom accepted quite without proof. fire.and therefore in the language expressing it. crudely sensual. tiny uniform particles (‘indivisibles’). If. as the purest
488
. as a synonym of a quite corporeal substance. with the thesis of the objective reality of the universal. of course. then not only do Marx and Spinoza turn out to be ‘cryptoplatonists’ but also Thales and Democritus. and so on. ‘too materialistic’. in the form of water. mysticism in it. as it were. the accusation of a disguised Platonism that is immanently linked. but there is not the slightest tendency to. Such a notion may be considered naive (though in fact it is far from being so naive). one takes the view from the very beginning (but why-we do not know) that the universal is the idea. or trace of. It is therefore quite absurd to press the accusation that is constantly advanced against materialism by its opponents. and only the idea.

We would note in passing that the prejudice described here. also seemed such to Hegel. candidly suggested that materialism was impossible as a philosophical system on the grounds that philosophy was the science of the
489
.prejudice inherited from the Middle Ages. in the form of the meaning of a word. to be something self-evident. read as absolute truth by modern Neopositivists. From that. and the air that it breathes. the dogma of the identity of the universal and the sense (meaning) of a word also begins to seem a natural premise. Its vitality is not fortuitous but is linked with the really immense role that the word and the verbal ‘explication’ of the idea have played and play in the moulding of intellectual culture. term. or linguistic sign. and the soil on which it grows. Hegel. arises the illusion that the universal allegedly has its actual existence (its reality) only and exclusively in the form of logos. too. too. Since philosophical consciousness specially reflecting on the universal is concerned from the very beginning with its verbal expression. who is not a favourite with them.

Hegel. and only the idea. first smashed the old prejudice. and the universal was the idea. He had the immense advantage over the latest devotees of this prejudice that he understood thought itself much more profoundly. Engels. but rather in the sense of a law-governed
490
. The radical.universal. and this was typical of him in general. it retained the significance of the first form of its being for him. just the idea. and then restored it to all its rights by means of a cunningly clever dialectical apparatus. both in time and in essence. Thus it was Hegel himself who thoroughly undermined the prestige of the prejudice that consisted in identifying thought and speech. was linked with affirmation of the objective reality of the Universal. and Lenin. materialist rethinking of the achievements of his logic (dialectics) carried through by Marx. though he did not consider the word the sole form of the being there of an idea. and could not be anything else. but he returned a prisoner to it by a roundabout route since. not at all in the spirit of Plato or Hegel.

Uniform phenomena therefore do not necessarily possess anything like a ‘family resemblance’ as the sole grounds for being counted as one class. all the components of which were related as a matter of fact not by virtue of their possessing one and the same identical attribute. On the other hand. The universal in them may be outwardly expressed much better in the form of differences. organic aggregate. and not an amorphous plurality of units taken together on the basis of a more or less chance attribute. that make the separate phenomena complement one another. even opposites. in the context of a self-developing totality or aggregate. of some quite real. in the sense of the law of their being joined together in the composition of some whole. by virtue of their having one and the same common ancestor. or to put it more exactly. but by virtue of a unity of genesis.e.connection of material phenomena. independent of thought and word). components of a whole.
491
. by virtue of their arising as diverse modifications of one and the same substance of a quite material character (i.

the incarnation of the qualities which distinguish value as capital
492
. he was once. which. In Marx’s analysis of capital the concept of the universal that we have briefly described plays most important methodological role. of course.e. naturally. in the elements of the word and idea. capital is capital in general. ‘To the extent that we are considering it here. a father often lives a very long time side by side with his sons. manifests itself precisely in the particularities. In that there is nothing even remotely mystical. and its existence in no way abolishes or belittles the reality of its modifications and of the separate individua derived from it and dependent on it.the universal. as a relation distinct from that of value and money. must be definitely thought of in the category ‘of ‘being there’.e. i. And if he is not present. in the ether of the abstract. also exists in itself as alongside other isolated individua derived from it. i. The genetically understood universal does not simply exist. in the individual characteristics of all the components of the whole without exception.

e. discovered between a triangle and a square. Otherwise confusion arises. We are present at the process of its becoming. as is labour. etc. moreover.. etc. etc. prices. But it is necessary to establish the specific form in which it is posited at a certain point. This dialectical process of its becoming is only the ideal expression of the real movement through which capital comes into being. The later relations are to be regarded as its developments coming out of this germ. But we are still concerned with neither with a particular form of capital..’ Here there is very clearly brought out that relation between value and capital which Hegel in the passage cited above. etc. are presupposed.. nor with an individual capital as distinct from other individual capitals. (1) The concept of value in general is in no case defined here through the aggregate of the abstract. etc. in a dual sense. pentagon. general attributes that one may want to discover in the composition of all its special forms (i.
493
.from value as pure value or as money. circulation. money. and. Value.

and capital. we must take the following point of principle into account.commodities. even if it is not understood. capital in this general form. and forms a very important moment of its doctrine of equilibrations. etc. quite specific. Capital in general.. general determinations of money and labour power. ‘. This is recognised by ordinary economics. etc. rent..) but is achieved by way of the most rigorous analysis of one single. the universal determinations of value are brought out that are later met (reproduced) at higher levels of development and analysis as abstract. for example. for another. In the analysis of this value reality. interest. which has ‘more of a logical than an economic character’. (2) If we are concerned with defining capital in general. as Marx specially remarked. etc. although belonging to individual
494
. and actually existing relation between people. the relation of the direct exchange of one commodity. reduced to its simplest form.. is itself a real existence. labour power. capital. as distinct from the particular real capitals. then.

it is at the same time a particular real form alongside the form of the particular and individual. ‘For example. becomes damn real in this case. through loans. forms the capital which accumulates in the banks or is distributed through them. and must realise itself in this double form. are numbers as such.g. c/b. in its elemental form as capital. c. This double positing. this relating to self as to an alien.. the capital of a particular nation which represents capital par excellence in antithesis to another will have to lend itself out to a third nation in order to be able to realise it-self. While the general is therefore on the one hand only a mental (gedachte) mark of distinction (differentia specifica).
495
. a. it forms a level between the different countries. in general. a law of capital in general that. so admirably distributes itself in accordance with the needs of production. If it is therefore e. and. but then again they are whole numbers as opposed to a/b. it must posit itself doubly. c/a. b. etc.’ It is ‘the same also in algebra. in order to realise itself..g. as Ricardo says. b/a. b/c. Likewise. then e.capitalists. etc.’ Marx continued.

Translated into the language
496
. presuppose the former as their general elements’. but also its logical principle. ‘. with the definition of the essence of man. however. . basing himself precisely on a dialectical understanding of the problem of the general. The essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each separate individual. the solution of which was found by Marx. Here one clearly sees not only the sociological principle of Marx’s thinking. by virtue of which the general cannot in principle be revealed in the make-up of the particular individuals by formal abstraction (by way of identifying the similar or identical in them) can be most vividly demonstrated by the example of the theoretical difficulties connected with the concept ‘man’.’ as Marx aphoristically formulated his conception in the famous theses on Feuerbach.which latter. the individual. The situation of the dialectical relation between the general (universal) and the particular. In its reality it is the ensemble (aggregate) of social relations.

(specifically of a human forms of life and culture formed before
independently of him. through concrete investigation and understanding of the patterns with which the process of the birth and evolution both of human society as a whole and of the separate individual has taken place and is taking place. From that angle the human personality can
497
. be it the human race or some other genus.of logic. general attributes possessed by each member of the given class taken separately. in a series of the abstract. insofar as he actualises — and just by his individuality — some ensemble or other of historically developed faculties activity). The separate individual is only human in the exact and strict sense of the word. of man’s social and historical relations to man. The essence of human nature in general can only be brought out through a scientific. his aphorism means that it is useless to seek the general determinations expressing the essence of a class. and mastered by him during upbringing (the moulding of the person). critical analysis of the ‘whole ensemble’.

logical determination of the concrete universality of human life can consist solely in disclosing the necessity with which the diverse forms of specifically human life activity develop one from the other and in interaction of the one on the other.
be
considered
as
an
individual
embodiment of culture. the faculties of social man and his corresponding needs. of the universal. ethnography.e. In other words. i. in Universality so understood is by no means a silent. and archaeology) the
498
. The materialist conception of the essence of man sees (in full agreement with the data of anthropology. theoretical.rightly man. generic ‘sameness’ of individuals but reality repeatedly and diversely broken up within itself into particular (separate) spheres mutually complementing each other and in essence mutually dependent on each other and therefore linked together by bonds of community of origin no less firm and no less flexible than the organs of the body of a biological specimen developed from one and the same egg cell.

talking. The definition of man in general as a toolmaking animal is a typical example in which the Marxian conception of the universal as the concretely universal is seen most clearly of all. composing music. Raphael or Kant cannot be subsumed. From the standpoint of the canons of formal logic this definition is much too concrete to be universal. and -also the Marxian conception of its relation to the particular and the individual.universal form of human life in labour. in the direct transformation of nature (both external and his own) that social man brings about with the help of tools made by himself. for under it such undoubted members of the human race as Mozart or Leo Tolstoy. That is why Marx felt such sympathy to Benjamin Franklin’s famous definition (quoted in Boswell’s Life of Johnson) of man as a tool-making animal: a toolmaking animal and only therefore also a thinking animal. obeying moral norms. and so on. Formally such a definition applies only to a narrow circle of individuals. to the workers in
499
.

The old logic therefore rightly regarded it not as a universal but exclusively as a particular definition. unlike its depiction in the epistemological and logical constructions of Neopositivists. Science. say. or workshops. Even ‘workers who do not make machines (or tools) but only use them.engineering works. not as a definition of man in general but of a particular profession. The general (concretely universal) stands opposed to the sensuously given variety of separate individuals primarily not as a mental abstraction but as their own substance. in its real historical development. formally do not come within the scope of this definition. The conception of the general and of its paths of scientific realisation described here is by no means the monopoly of philosophical dialectics.
500
. As such it also embodies or includes the whole wealth of the particular and individual in its concrete determinateness and that not simply as the possibility of development but as its necessity. always begins. as a concrete form of their interaction.

and that often in spite of the conscious logical precepts and maxims that its representatives profess. The abstraction of value in general and the word that records it are as old as market relations.more or less consistently. The Greek axia. from the very beginning. nominalistly oriented logic still suggests to science. the German Werth. a universal category of political economy. or Adam Smith. or was worth something. Every merchant and peasant of all ages used ‘value’ or ‘worth’ for everything that could be bought or sold. And if the theoretical political economists had tried to work out a concept of value in general. of course. and so on were not created by Sir William Petty. This circumstance is clearly traceable in the history of the concept ‘value’. guided by the recipes that purely formal. everything that cost something. they would never. of the similar that each of the
501
. of the bringing out of the abstractly general. Here it has not been a matter at all. from such a concept of the universal. or Ricardo. have done so.

The whole point. then one is the natural price of the other. however. Marx pointed out clearly the essence of their posing of the question. . pedantic enumeration of the attributes of those phenomena to which the word ‘value’ is opposite.’
502
.objects possesses. an awareness of the real generality. and the whole exercise would amount simply to clarification of the scope of the term’s applicability). .e. i. . is that the classical political economists posed the question quite differently. and no more. and the matter would be limited to simple ‘explication’ of the shopkeeper’s notions about value. to a simple. which general word usage long ago united in the term ‘value’ (in that case it would simply introduce order into the notions that any shopkeeper uses. so that the answer to it proved to be a concept. The first English economist Sir William Petty arrived at the concept of value by the following reasoning: ‘If a man can bring to London an ounce of Silver out of the Earth in Peru in the same time that he can produce a Bushel of Corn.

distribution. But we are present here right at the birth of the fundamental concept of all subsequent science of the production. like profit and capital. The classical groped political out the economists way of spontaneously
determining value in its general form. The general. relying on Locke’s notions about thought and the universal. was not only not
503
. having already formed the relevant concept. ‘natural price’ being spoken of. Here the concept also expresses (reflects) (like Hegel’s example of the triangle) such a real phenomenon given in experience as (being quite particular among other particulars) at the same time proves to be universal and represents value in general. and accumulation of wealth.Let us note in passing that in the reasoning adduced here the term ‘value’ is absent in general. which led them into a number of paradoxes and antinomies. but in retrospect. they tried to ‘verify’ it in accordance with the canons of logic. when they tried to ‘justify’ it by analysis of its own particular variants.

g. The reality of the universal in nature is a law. contradicted by them. but only as a tendency manifesting itself in the behaviour of a more or less complex ensemble of individual phenomena. e. The general determinations of value (of the law of value) are worked out in Capital in the course of an analysis of one example of the
504
. and so the way out. but was directly refuted by them. but a law in its reality (as is shown.confirmed. the physics of the microworld) is not realised as some abstract rule by which the movement of each single particle taken separately would be governed. Only Marx succeeded in establishing the reason for the origin of the various paradoxes. in particular. and he did so just because he was guided by dialectical notions of the nature of the general and its inter-relations with the particular and the individual. And thought is forced willy-nilly to take that circumstance into account. by modern natural science. through the breach and negation of the universal in each of its separate (individual) manifestations.

specifically distinguishing it from profit. Only direct exchange or barter without money was analysed. land rent. historically the first and therefore logically the simplest. when examining the problem of value in its general form. land rent. Here the peculiarities of the simple commodity form.e. and so on. and other individual forms of value. to forget profit. namely money.
505
. Marx himself obtained a solution of the problem in general form because all the subsequent formations — not only profit but also even money — were taken as not existent at the start of the analysis. the direct exchange or barter of one commodity for another. interest. with the most rigorous abstraction of all other individual forms (developed on its basis). and it was immediately clear that such a raising of its individual to the general differed in principle from the act of simple. i. Marx saw the shortcoming of Ricardo’s analysis of value precisely in his not being able..concreteness of value. profit. That is why Ricardo’s abstraction proved incomplete and so formal. formal abstraction.

quite the contrary. The distinction between Marx’s dialectical materialist conception. their theoretical expression coincided with the determination of value in its general form. consisted precisely in its being formed on the one hand through his inability to abstract it from the existence of other developed forms of value. however. and ceased to be its theoretical expression. The general was thus taken in the end as completely isolated from the particular and separate. Yet it is quite obvious that the
506
. and on the other hand through his abstracting of the peculiarities of direct commodity exchange.were not thrown away as something inessential. The incompleteness of Ricardo’s abstraction. and the formality linked with it. And it is important to bring this out clearly for the reason that their conceptions are too often equated in Western literature. That is what distinguishes the dialectical conception of the general from the purely formal conception. and the interpretation given the general in Hegel’s idealistic dialectics is no less important.

despite all its dialectical value. When Hegel explains his ‘speculative’ conception of the general in opposition to the ‘purely formal’ on the example of geometrical figures (treating the triangle as ‘the figure in general’) it may seem at first glance that here was the logical schema in ready-made form that enabled Marx to cope with the problem of the general determination of value. The point is as follows. comes close. on a decisive point of principle and not just in details. its an empirically given reality existing in time and
507
.e. it would seem that Hegel saw the difference between genuine universality and purely formal abstraction in the truly general’s itself existing in the form of the particular. to that very metaphysical view that Hegel himself had so strongly undermined the authority and influence of. earthly problems.orthodox Hegelian interpretation of the general. i. This comes out particularly clearly in the concrete applications of the principles of Hegelian logic to the analysis of real. Actually.

and logically incorrect. In other words the idealism of the Hegelian interpretation of the
508
. For the orthodox Hegelian. According to Hegel. hypostasies of the ‘genuinely general’. though important. In the production of tools Hegel saw not the basis of everything human in man. Franklin’s definition (and Marx’s) was much too concrete to be general or universal. as for any representative of the formal logic criticised by him (a very notable unanimity!). That was why the definition of man as a toolmaking animal would have been quite unacceptable to Hegelian logic. manifestation of his limit nature. but only one. exists exclusively in the ether of ‘pure thought’ and in no case in the space and time of external reality. in its strict and exact sense. the general as such.space (outside men’s heads) and perceived in contemplation. embodiments. In that sphere we are dealing only with a number of particular alienations.

the whole movement seems ‘illegitimate’ and ‘illogical’. When Hegelian logic is taken in its pristine form as the means of evaluating the movement of thought in the first chapters of Capital. because that. For idealism did
509
. was a form immanent in the ‘rational will’ and not in man’s external being. in which it was only manifested and materialised. into despite the all its of superiority over formal logic. from his angle. and without a radical purging of all traces of idealism. The Hegelian logician would be right. So cannot be Hegelian taken logic. particular form of the realisation of value in general. like any truly general category of human life activity. could not and armoury materialistically oriented science without any essential amendments. if he were to say of Marx’s analysis of value that there was no general determination of this category in it.general leads to the very same result as the metaphysical interpretation he so disliked. that Marx only ‘described’ but did not theoretically ‘deduce’ the determination of one special.

When Hegel spoke. say. the schema of the examination then and there received a one-way character. for the transition that Marx discovered in the determinations of value. for example.
510
. In the Hegelian schema there could be no place. however.not remain something external’ for logic at all. the transformation of the singular or individual into the general. The actual history of economic (market) relations testified. but up to a certain point (and for very long) it remained a particular relation happening from time to time between people and things in production. demonstrating that the form of value in general was by no means always the general form of the organisation of production. while the singular always proved to be a product. of the transitions of opposing categories (including the general and the particular). a particular ‘modus’ of universality (and therefore poor in content). It became the general. With Hegel only the general had the privilege of alienating itself in forms of the
particular and the singular. in Marx’s favour. but orientated the very logical sequence of thought.

that the rethinking to which the Hegelian dialectical conception of the general was subjected by Marx and Lenin must be understood. the Hegelian formulas sound differently
511
. as anomalies. transforming the category of the general or universal into the most important category of the logic of concrete investigation of concrete. but was even rather the rule. historically developing phenomena. materialism deepened and broadened its conception. It is in the light of that. This transition of the individual and chance into the general was not at all rare in history. Hardly anything really new can arise in any other way.Only capitalism made value (the commodity form of the product) the general form of the interrelations of the components of production. While preserving all the dialectical moments noted by Hegel. as something particular and partial. In the context of the materialist conception of the dialectics of history and the dialectics of thought. It has always happened in history that phenomena that subsequently became general arose first precisely as individual exceptions to the rule.

That is beyond the power of a single person. The general includes and embodies in itself the whole wealth of details.’ And there is not a trace of any of the Platonic-Hegelian mystique in that. other particular forms of actual movement. particular phenomenon with a tendency to become general. and developing ‘from itself’ (by virtue of its inner contradictions) other just as real phenomena.from on the lips of their creator. not as the ‘idea’ but as a quite real. We have simply tried to throw some light on a number of the conditions and premises for
512
. having lost all mystical colouring.
CONCLUSION
Quite
understandably
we
have
not
undertaken the task here of giving a systematic exposition of Marxist-Leninist logic. and can scarcely be done within the space of one book.

however. lead to the creation of a capital work which could rightly bear one of three titles: Logic. understood and realised as the business-like collaboration of philosophers and
513
. of course. constitutes only one stage. Philosophy alone cannot achieve this ‘end product’. becasue the end product of all work in the field of philosophical dialectics is the resolution of the concrete problems of concrete sciences. that only by taking the conditions formulated above into account can such a work be successful. which we consider should be a collective effort. i. that calls for an alliance of dialectics and concrete scientific research. and which could take as its epigraph Lenin’s words: "Three words are not needed: it is one and the same thing". actualisation of the logical system in a concrete scientific investigation. materialist world outlook). Dialectics.further work in that direction. or The Theory of Knowledge (of the modern. We think. The creation of a Logic understood as a system of categories. The next step would have to be the realisation.e.

and no longer claims a monopoly in relation to the ‘world as a whole’. It appears to us tat. in the conceptions set out above. not a ‘science of sciences’ crowning their system as just another variety of ‘absolute truth’. Understood as logic. The scientific
514
. philosophical dialectics becomes a necessary coimponent of the scientific.
It seems to us that this conclusion stems directly from the analysis we have presented here. it must first develop the system of its own specific philosophical concepts. and that this conception corresponds directly to Lenin’s ideas both on the plane of the inter-relations of the latter and the other branches of scientific knowledge. materialist world outlook. from the angle of which it could display the strength of critical distinction in relation to actually given thought and consciously practised methods. and not their servant.natural scientists. and not their supreme overseer. of philosophy and social and historical fields of knowledge. logic does become an equal collaborator with the other sciences. But in order for dialectics to be an equal collaborator in concrete scientific knowledge.

and the theory of knowledge. That system also includes philosophical dialectics. and without it cannot claim either fullness or scientism.world outlook can only be described by the whole system of modern sciences. Philosophy is also the logic of the development of the world outlook. or. logic. as Lenin put it. The scientific world outlook that does not include philosophy. is as much nonsense as the ‘pure’ philosophy that assumes that it alone is the world outlook. its "living soul". taking on its shoulders a job that can only be done by a whole complex of sciences.
515
.